


To Shatter Fate

by Starrie_Wolf



Series: To Shatter Fate [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, BAMF Kurosaki Ichigo, BAMF Urahara Kisuke, Epic Battles, Established Relationship, Except Aizen, Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Ending guaranteed for everyone, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mate if you want Aizen to have a happy ending you're reading the wrong author, Time Travel, UraIchi Week 2018, chosen family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-05-14 21:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14777843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrie_Wolf/pseuds/Starrie_Wolf
Summary: “… If fate is a millstone, then we are the grist. There is nothing we can do. So I wish for strength. If I cannot protect them from the wheel, then give me a strong blade, and enough strength…to shatter fate.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The moment I saw "Time Travel" in the prompt list for UraIchi Week I knew that I was going to pull this one out.
> 
> AKA, TBE on 10x speed (it's almost exactly 1/10 the length of TBE, even). All of the plot twists and action, none of the politics and subplots.

Arms akimbo, Kurosaki Yuzu glared at everyone else gathered around the dining room table. “Ichi-nii isn’t home yet,” she scolded in what seemed to be the umpteenth time. Her eyes narrowed as one of them surreptitiously stretched out a hand towards the platter of tempura. Did he _honestly_ think he was being sneaky?

Her ladle came down on the thieving hand with a loud smack that made the other boy howl. “I’m _hungry_!” Jinta complained, clutching at his arm dramatically. “I’m going to wither away into nothing at this rate!”

Karin sighed, straightening from her lazy slouch over the table, and began dragging him by the collar towards the living room. “If you’re going to wither away, do it outside!”

“I wonder where Ichi-nii is?” Yuzu asked out loud, though she wasn’t expecting an answer. “And I made his favourite for dinner too!”

“Don’t ask me.” Karin was back, flopping down into her seat and sending Yuzu a reassuring smile. “I’m sure he just got held up. Ichi-nii wouldn’t miss your cooking on purpose.”

She did know that. She’d known that since she was five, barely old enough to understand what it meant when Daddy told them _I’m sorry, sweetheart,_ _okaa-chan isn’t coming back_.

 _“Then what about Onii-chan?”_ she had asked, Karin’s grip on her hand so hard that it hurt. _“Is he coming back?”_

Back then, she had been too young to understand the flash of emotion across her father’s face, the mixture of guilt and grief and something darker.

 _‘I don’t know,’_ was all her father had said.

She remembered waiting that night, sitting with Karin on their bed, waiting for someone to come and tuck them in, to read them a bedtime story. She remembered waiting, her knees drawn to her chest, until Karin’s sobs had dried to soft little hiccups and they both passed out from exhaustion.

No one came.

* * *

The next morning dawned, far too bright and early. The girls crept downstairs, hand-in-hand, hoping beyond hope that it had all just been a bad dream, that they would see their mother standing in front of the stove with a smile on her face and breakfast on the table, the way it had always been.

But the kitchen was bare and silent, the empty dining table almost mocking them.

She had no recollection of how long they’d sat there, until the sound of the doorbell ringing woke Karin up from her exhausted stupor. She remembered the tiny spark of hope leaping in her chest – _maybe okaa-san had come back_? – as they both rushed towards the front door, feet slipping on the cold marble floor in their haste.

But no, it was just an old woman at the door, wondering why the Kurosaki Clinic wasn’t open as usual.

They said, no, they didn’t know where their father was, only that their mother wasn’t coming back and their older brother might not either.

“Oh, you poor dears,” the old woman had murmured, patting them on the head, much to their confusion. They watched her totter slowly back to the growing queue in front of the Clinic, and the small crowd begin to disperse. Only when the last person had left – all the while shooting them undecipherable looks that she’d later learn was pity – did they shut the front door.

In the darkness of the living room, Yuzu slumped against the door, and began to cry.

~*~*~*~

She didn’t remember much of the rest of that day, but sometime in the… evening, perhaps, since daylight had been waning by that time, the growling of their stomachs evolved into sharp jabbing hunger pangs. They hadn’t seen their father all day, no idea if he was even in the house. So Yuzu wiped away her tears, got up from the couch where she and Karin had been curled up together, and made her way to the kitchen.

She had to get a chair before she could see the top of the stove, and she tried to imitate what their mother had always done, turning the big knob and clicking the igniter repeatedly. It took her five tries before there was the familiar _whoosh_ and the flames leapt up, far too close to her face, and Yuzu was so startled that she fell off the chair.

Karin later told her that she’d screamed, and that caused her twin to come running. All she remembered, though, was a brief sensation of weightlessness, and the next thing she knew Karin’s face was hovering above her, her sister shaking her repeatedly and crying her name in stuttering sobs.

 _“I’m okay, Karin-chan,”_ she had said, climbing to her feet. What did okaa-san do next – ah, yes, the oil.

The cooking oil was kept on the lowest shelf in the cupboard right next to the stove, but even on top of the chair neither of them had any hope of reaching it. Very carefully, Yuzu climbed onto the counter, inching forwards on her hands and knees until her questing hands bumped into the edge of the cupboard door and she could pull it open – carefully, carefully, it was a long way to the floor.

She didn’t quite expect the oil to be that heavy, however, nor that slippery.

Yuzu yelped as the container slid out of her grasp, landing with a deafening thud on the counter and promptly spraying its contents everywhere – the stove, the counter, the floor.

“Maybe you should get down, Yuzu-chan,” Karin had nervously suggested, hovering nearby.

She agreed wholeheartedly, and began looking for a way down. Karin pushed the chair nearer, and Yuzu tentatively extended a foot backwards, twisting her body around to see where she was going. She put her hand down blindly, groping for purchase, and realised too late that it had landed in the middle of a puddle of oil.

And then she was falling sideways, closer and closer towards the still-lit stove.

There was a sudden whoosh of air, and she would later swear that she bounced off something shimmering yellow an inch away from the fire – but it all happened so fast that she couldn’t even be sure if it were her imagination. Then she was toppling backwards, and this time she heard two voices scream her name. She screwed her eyes shut –

– but unlike the last time, she landed on something soft. Stunned, Yuzu lay there for a moment, until an achingly familiar voice broke the silence.

“Yuzu! Are you all right?”

Her head snapped up and she scrambled to roll onto her stomach, even before Karin spun around and _shrieked_ , “Ichi-nii!”

There was some sort of net underneath her, fading in and out of her sight the way ghosts did, but she didn’t care about that right now. Yuzu crawled forwards, desperate to reach her brother, to assure herself that he was real, even if he looked… older? But it was definitely Ichi-nii, shuffling forwards on his knees, Karin clinging to his side like a limpet. He even hoisted her up by her armpits the same way he always did, depositing her on his lap.

It was real. He was real.

“Otō-chan said you might not be coming back!” she sobbed, clutching her brother around the waist.

Ichi-nii’s hand, which had been rubbing her back soothingly throughout the ordeal, stilled. “ _What_?” A more urgent thought seemed to strike him, then. “Actually, where _is_ he?”

“We can’t find him,” sniffled Karin into his side, and almost absently their brother shifted her closer, his hand resuming its original petting motion.

“Okay,” he soothed, “it’s not your fault.” Then, he glanced around the kitchen, as if taking in for the first time what they’d been trying to do, and frowned minutely. “When was the last time you ate?”

As if on cue, both her and Karin’s stomachs growled at the same time.

The frown deepened. “There might be something left over – no,” he corrected himself, “okaa-san didn’t keep leftovers. Eh, I’m sorry, could you –” he stuttered to a stop.

Yuzu lifted her head up from Ichi-nii’s chest to see her brother staring at the empty doorway, a look of abject confusion on his face. She squinted, but could see no one there, not even the shimmering outline that she could see sometimes. Still –

“Are you talking to a ghost, Ichi-nii?”

Karin too was looking in that direction. “There’s nothing there,” she reported, and her twin would know better than she did.

Their brother shook his head slowly. “Nothing, I just thought –” He cut himself off and shook himself a little. “Never mind. Can you stand, Yuzu, Karin?” Holding each of them by the hand, he guided them first to the bathroom to wash their faces, and then to the couch in the living room.

The sound of the front door opening startled all of them, and for a moment Ichi-nii was nearly trampled by both of them scrambling over him in order to see above the back of the couch.

“Tadaima~” called out a sing-song voice.

“Okaeri,” Ichi-nii called back automatically, before shooting bolt upright on the couch. “Wait, what do you mean, _you’re back_? You don’t even live here!”

“So cruel!” And now she could see the speaker, a blond man she had never seen before, dressed in the traditional garb of a Buddhist temple monk. Yuzu wrinkled her nose. Though she had never seen that colour scheme before – usually people preferred their samue robes in muted browns or blues – and what was that _thing_ on his head? “And I brought presents too!” He walked closer, holding out a white plastic bag.

Yuzu’s stomach gave an involuntary growl as the enticing smell of melon bread wafted out of the bag, but she hesitated. “Okaa-chan said we shouldn’t take food from strangers.”

For some reason, her brother found that really amusing, though the smile didn’t dim from the stranger’s face. “Ah, but as you can see, it’s from the convenience store! Look, the seal’s not even broken.”

“It’s fine,” Ichi-nii told them softly. “I know him.”

Yuzu’s face scrunched up in utter confusion even as she took the proffered paper bag – which, as promised, was still sealed – as well as the can of red bean soup, still warm to the touch. “Onii-chan had a friend like that?” This eccentrically-dressed stranger didn’t compute with _anything_ she knew of her nine-year-old brother.

Then again, her brother _really_ didn’t look like a nine-year-old right now. Did something happen?

“Uh,” her brother shared a glance with the blond, who had circled around to the couch proper. “It’s complicated.”

The stranger reared back, one hand held to his chest dramatically. “You wound me, Ichigo.”

Ichi-nii scowled back, and was about to speak when something was tossed at him. Yuzu watched with wide eyes as he caught it with a single hand, and then let the paper bag dangle from two fingers to catch the next item with that same hand. Had her brother always been able to do that, or was this one of the new things too?

He didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d done something shocking, instead staring down at his own melon bread and red bean soup. “What.”

“You haven’t eaten since last night either, have you?” The blond gestured with his own melon bread, perched on one edge of the coffee table.

Her brother frowned down at the food. “Hirohyaku Supermarket is nearly a kilometre away,” he muttered. “It’s been what, ten minutes, fifteen minutes maximum?” He looked up, eyes widening. “How did you –”

The stranger tipped his head to the side, giving him a bland look. “I walk fast.”

Yuzu gave the cane in his hand a dubious look, but Ichi-nii only shut his eyes and nodded. After another moment, he opened them and bowed as much as he was able in a seated position with both his sisters clinging onto him. “Thank you very much, Kisuke-san.”

“Thank you very much,” Yuzu repeated before the older man could give the standard reply.

Karin elbowed their brother. “What do _we_ call him?” her sister asked in an urgent whisper. Surely they can’t possibly use his given name!

“My apologies.” Clearly, she wasn’t quiet enough. “My name is Urahara Kisuke.” The stranger bowed slightly, the standard bow of an elder to a junior. “A humble candy store owner. Pleased to make your acquaintance; Ichigo has spoken much about you, Karin-chan, Yuzu-chan.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Urahara-san,” they both echoed automatically, returning a much more respectful bow.

From under his hat, Urahara-san regarded them with a faintly assessing look. “I had originally intended to leave things be,” he said, almost to himself. “I don’t think it’s wise to leave the girls on their own, and there’s still the question of meals to settle.”

Ichi-nii stared at him for a moment, and she thought she heard him mutter something like _how did we get through this the first time_ under his breath, but she must have misheard it. “You’re suggesting we move in with you,” he concluded flatly. “But first hang on a moment – do you have any idea where _oyaji_ is?”

Urahara-san blew out a long breath, gaze shuttered, and then he looked at the closed door leading to the clinic portion of the house. “He’s inside there.”

* * *

The sound of the front door opening jolted Yuzu from her reverie, and as one the two of them rushed into the living room.

“Okaeri, Ichi-nii!”

“Aa.” Their brother squatted down, accepting a hug in turn from each of them, and hoisting both of them up in his arms as if they weighed no more than a feather. “Tadaima, Karin, Yuzu.”

“Why _were_ you late, Ichi-nii?” Karin scowled at him, once they were let down onto the floor. “Dinner was ready half an hour ago!”

“I’m sorry, Yuzu,” their brother apologised immediately. “There were some thugs bothering Mahiru-san, so I had to chase them away first.”

Yuzu tilted her head, thinking even as they made their way back into the dining room. “Oh! Mahiru-san, from the car accident two weeks ago?” How could she be mad at him for that? She beamed winningly at Ichi-nii. “I understand, don’t worry about it!”

“Oy, Jinta, we’re not waiting for you if you don’t hurry up!” Karin leaned back out into the living room and yelled.

“I made tempura today!” she told Ichi-nii, leading him to the table, where the rest of their family was already seated. “It’s from okaa-san’s recipes; you know, the ones she kept in that box?”

A wistful look flashed briefly across Ichi-nii’s face. Yuzu immediately felt bad for bringing her up, but, well. She couldn’t take that back now.

Under the table, Urahara-san discreetly squeezed her brother’s knee.

The scowl lost its traction, softening into something more neutral.

“Smells great, Yuzu.” It was a scene that had repeated hundreds of times, and by all means should have sounded rote, trite – but Ichi-nii always sounded as sincere as that first time Yuzu had produced a perfect dish.

“Well,” Urahara-san announced, clapping his hands and looking around the crowded table. “Shall we start?”

“Itadakimasu!”

* * *

Kisuke had disappeared shortly after the end of the meal, as was the norm for him. Ichigo didn’t really mind, even though that meant he was in charge of mediating the inevitably squabbles that resulted from putting seven teenagers under one roof.

Normally he’d have Tessai to help him wrangle the kids, but not today. After all, the entire reason why it was _Yuzu_ ’s turn to be the chef today, was because they were celebrating Tessai’s very belated birthday. They couldn’t even celebrate it on time, not when the shop was so swamped in orders and shipments that Ichigo couldn’t handle everything on his own.

“Ururu, Karin, it’s your turn to do the dishes today,” he finally had to intervene. “Remember, you swapped with Chad last week so that you can catch that football game you liked?”

“There’s Don Kanonji on today!” chirped Yuzu, already scrambling out of her own seat to secure a prime position in front of the television. As a house rule, the chef was always exempt from dish duty.

Well, Orihime had wanted to help, but she was thankfully outvoted by the rest of the kids, much to Ichigo’s secret relief. Having to suffer _one_ Inoue’s idea of cooking was enough for a lifetime.

“Kurosaki-san.”

He stopped in the doorway, one hand on the door. “… something you need, Mizuiro? Keigo?”

By the look of things, ‘seven’ teenagers might soon become ‘eight’, if Ichigo remembered Mizuiro’s home situation accurately.

“Ah.” Mizuiro smiled at him, but it was his fake smile, the one that never reached his eyes. “We’d just like to thank you for hosting us at dinner tonight. We understand that Inoue-san didn’t give you much of a warning.” He gave Keigo a sharp prod, who also bowed somewhat belatedly.

Ichigo scratched the back of his head. So it was Orihime who brought them home, huh. “Eh, it’s no trouble – there’s normally at least ten of us anyway, a couple more doesn’t make a difference. As long as you don’t mind the chaos.”

As if to prove his point, there was a deafening crash from the kitchen, followed by Ururu’s high-pitched, “Sorry!”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Keigo was quick to reassure, barely wincing at the din. “Man, you should’ve seen the crazy stuff my sister and her friends can get up to. And she definitely isn’t half as good a cook as Yuzu-can is! Er, but don’t tell her that.”

Keigo’s parents worked late, Ichigo remembered.

“Well, you can always bring her the next time, if you two want some home-cooked food.”

Keigo’s eyes went wide. Even Mizuiro looked genuinely surprised.

“We’ll just add you to the chore list if you come around regularly,” Ichigo explained. “That’s what we do for Tatsuki and Uryū.”

“Arisawa and Ishida come frequently too?” Mizuiro was watching him with too-sharp eyes.

Ichigo met his gaze steadily. Mizuiro might be a budding yakuza don, but Ichigo had faced down a lot worse than a human gang leader. “Yeah,” he confirmed.

They both ignored Keigo wailing his gratitude in the background. Some things would never change.

“You can even stay over, if you like.” Ichigo did a quick mental calculation. “We’ve got the room, and it’s a long walk to Naruki City every day.”

Mizuiro lifted one fine eyebrow.

“Just don’t perv on the girls,” Ichigo said seriously, with a pointed glance at Keigo.

That was what finally made Mizuiro crack a grin, a real one this time, one that lit up his eyes. No wonder the kid was so popular with women.

“You don’t have to worry about that, Kurosaki-san – I like my women a lot older.”

Ichigo thought of Yoruichi, and smirked.

Mizuiro eyed him a little strangely, but he let it go. “We’ll take our leave first, then.” He dragged Keigo into another bow with him.

“Take care on the way home,” Ichigo responded, though he knew he needn’t bother. Any thug unfortunate enough to run into _Kojima Mizuiro_ should be the one ‘taking care’ instead.

Turning back towards the living room, he poked his head in to see all seven occupants squashed around the television, glued to whatever Don Kanonji was doing onscreen. From the armchair in the corner, Tessai discreetly sent him a thumbs-up.

Apparently he _actually_ enjoyed the show. Ichigo would never understand shinigami sometimes. And the Shinigami who could tolerate Kisuke on a day to day basis? Even weirder. Hm, what did that say about  _him_?

All right then.

Ichigo made another detour to check that the dining room and kitchen were clean, because experience had unfortunately taught him that Kanonji would always hold more allure than dish duty. If the kids didn’t do a good enough job, he was going to have to handle it himself, because no way was he going to push everything onto Tessai on his day _off_.

Everything looked to be in order.

He was turning into a proper homemaker, Ichigo reflected ruefully, continuing down the corridor to the sleeping quarters. _That_ definitely had never featured in his job prospects back when he was in high school; but then, he had never expected to be dragged into a spirit war against an unfortunately immortal megalomaniac either.

Or time travel.

The time travel might be the weirdest part of it, but he was making do.

The rasp of the shōji door was deafening in the tranquillity of the night. Ichigo paused on the threshold, one hand on the wooden frame, and murmured a soft, “Shitsure shimasu.”

No invitation issued from the depths of the room; but then, Ichigo hadn’t expected any, and after another moment of silence he boldly stepped forwards. As his foot crossed the threshold, there was a _shiver_ in the air, a soft whisper against his senses as the wards recognised his reiatsu.

As though stripping away a veil of darkness, he could suddenly see the outline of the unlit room, see the dark shape of the Western-style bed he’d finally convinced Kisuke into getting a while back, and hear the sound of crickets chirping in the night. The back door stood open, and leaning against the door frame was a form silhouetted in the moonlight. A jug of sake sat on the porch, along with a solitary cup.

Ichigo slid the bedroom door shut behind him and padded soundlessly out onto the porch, settling down next to Kisuke. He hefted the jug experimentally, noting that it was already half-empty, and poured himself a cup.

“So, this is it, then.”

Kisuke gave a very soft exhale, swivelling his head until one bright grey eye peered out at Ichigo. “It appears to be so.”

Ichigo hummed, tucking his legs under himself, and leaned into Kisuke’s shoulder. He could hear Kisuke’s surprised inhale, but there was an arm draping itself companionably over his shoulders, pulling him in closer.

He tried to relax, but he couldn’t do it, somehow. Urahara Shōten was the best-warded place in three worlds; and yet, something was tripping his danger sense, making his skin tingle all over.

“That’ll be Aizen-san’s camera-flies, trying to break in again.”

Ichigo flicked him an irritated look. “And you couldn’t have mentioned that earlier?” Being out in the open like that, even though he _knew_ the porch was just as heavily warded as the rest of the house, was making his paranoia go haywire.

 _Was_ it still paranoia if there was really someone after them, though?

Kisuke kissed his hair in apology.

“Don’t think that gets you out of it,” Ichigo warned, but the way he was melting against Kisuke’s side made it obvious that he didn’t really mean it.

“My apologies, Kurosaki-san.” Kisuke’s breath stirred the hairs at the nape of his neck, sending pleasant shivers down Ichigo’s spine.

He scowled automatically anyway. “It’s _Ichigo_.”

There was the faintest shadow of a smirk on Kisuke’s face, the only indication that he’d done it on purpose. It was a really good look on him.

Ichigo shivered again, for an entirely different reason this time.

“Are you trying to distract me?” he demanded.

“Is it working?” Kisuke breathed into his ear.

Ichigo closed his eyes. “Maybe,” he allowed, voice going hoarse. “But not here,” he warned, before Kisuke could do anything else. “I don’t care if you say the porch is warded to hell and back, the _thought_ of Aizen’s camera-flies really kills the mood for me.”

* * *

Right on time, the Senkaimon opened, half an hour past midnight.

Kisuke combed his fingers through Ichigo's hair and exhaled slowly.

_So it begins._

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There’s… so many of them,” she said faintly, and it was both an explanation and an apology.
> 
> She could tell that Kurosaki didn’t understand. “Everyone’s welcome under our roof,” he told her blithely, as if that was at all normal. Nobody, not even the most kind-hearted, took in starving spiritually-aware children from the streets. Everyone in Soul Society knew that those children attracted hungry Hollows like flies. If the children didn’t accidentally kill you with their uncontrolled burgeoning reiatsu, the Hollows would.
> 
> Kurosaki Ichigo was, somehow, a complete anomaly.
> 
> Rukia swallowed.
> 
> After this assignment, she was going to hunt Renji down, maybe take him to dinner at a nice izakaya or something. It didn’t matter that the Kuchiki elders would probably look down upon her for doing so, that it was beneath a Kuchiki to associate with a ruffian from the Eleventh. Rukia had been an Abarai long before she became a Kuchiki, and that meant Renji was her family _first_.

Kisuke was already gone by the time Ichigo woke up the next morning, which wasn’t all that unusual these days. He patted the empty space next to him, not surprised to find that it was cold to the touch. Ichigo sighed, reluctantly rolling out of bed. Kisuke probably got another brainwave of some kind in the middle of the night, and ran off to his lab to work it out. It would’ve been nice to wake up together – but he could make do.

“Morning, Tessai-san.”

From his position at the stove, Tessai turned to give him a nod.

“Kisuke’s busy again?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Tessai answered anyway, like he either didn’t know or didn’t care. “Tenchō’s in the lab.” Above the multiple bento boxes that he was expertly preparing, his glasses glinted ominously. “I can walk the twins to school, if Shachō wants to go downstairs.”

Ichigo would never understand why Tessai had started calling him _Chief_ , a few years into their residence at Urahara Shōten, as if he was the head of some corporation.

“Nah,” he finally said. He had a very good idea exactly what Kisuke’s preoccupation was about; it was probably the exact thing that sometimes kept Ichigo up at night, and that meant whatever Kisuke was doing was something he should definitely not interrupt. “If he doesn’t come out by lunchtime, I’ll go get him.”

Tessai nodded in acquiescence, ladling the last of the miso soup into bowls, just as the first of the kids stumbled in.

“Eh?” wondered Yuzu, rubbing at her eyes. “Kisuke-san’s not joining us?”

Her twin gave her a quick shove, and then immediately stuffed her hands behind her back as though Ichigo would have magically not seen the action. Did she think Ichigo would be offended by the question or something?

“Kisuke’s got something time-sensitive going on in the lab,” Ichigo told them. He doesn’t believe in sugarcoating. “So he won’t be joining us for breakfast today.”

Karin looked kind of troubled throughout the rest of the meal, to the point where she stopped Ichigo with a hand on his arm when the high schoolers departed en masse. “Ichi-nii,” she began slowly, cautiously, staring up at him with big earnest eyes. “If you two are fighting or something, you don’t have to hide it from us. We’re old enough to take it.”

Fighting? Ichigo blinked. If they were, that was news to Ichigo. Where did Karin even get that idea from?

“Because!” She stomped a foot on the ground. “Kisuke-san almost never comes for meals anymore, and he gets up as soon as he’s done, like he doesn’t want to have to spend another moment sitting next to you –”

“Karin.” Ichigo held up a hand, and then squatted down to her level. “Will you trust me?”

After a moment, she nodded.

“Always, Ichi-nii,” whispered Yuzu, clinging onto her hand.

“Remember when we explained to you why I now look nineteen, when I was supposed to be nine years old?”

Yuzu abandoned her sister to clutch onto his arm on the other side.

“Yeah,” Karin grunted.

“Kisuke’s just worried, that’s all.” Ichigo thought about how to explain it. “It’s almost the day when bad things start happening, so he’s been trying to prepare for everything he can think of, trying to make sure nothing goes wrong this time around. Can you understand that?”

Slowly, his sisters nodded.

“So he’s not mad at you,” Karin clarified.

Ichigo ruffled her hair. “Not at all,” he assured her.

“Sorry.”

“I’ve known Kisuke for more than half my life,” Ichigo reminded her gently. “Trust me when I tell you, we’re definitely not fighting?”

At her tentative nod, he stood up, checking his watch on reflex. “Oh crap, you’re going to be late.”

Yuzu’s face fell. Ichigo bit his lip. He could flash-step, of course, but with the news that Aizen’s camera-flies were becoming more active lately…

He snatched up the keys to the van, yelling out to Tessai as he did so.

At least Aizen wasn’t likely to care about something as mundane as a human vehicle.

~*~*~*~*~

“I’m back!” Ichigo shouted, juggling the bags of groceries in one hand while fumbling with the car keys with the other.

He slid the door to the shop open, and –

– nearly collided with Rukia.

“Oh!” she yelped, taking an automatic step back. “I’m sorry!”

Ichigo’s first instinct was to make sure he didn’t drop the eggs, which was possibly the only thing that saved him from blurting out her name like an idiot.

_Get a grip, Kurosaki._

Dropping the bags onto the counter, he managed to dredge up a customer-friendly smile for her. Both Tessai and Kisuke were conveniently missing in action, for some reason. “Welcome to Urahara Shōten, may I help you?”

Rukia frowned at him. “Are you… Urahara?”

Ichigo looked down at himself, and back up at her. Well, no, he wasn’t whom she was thinking of, but who was _she_ to judge, _Chappy-Lover_? “He’s probably in the back room doing inventory,” he lied. “How may I help you, shinigami-san?”

Rukia blinked. “Ah, well –” and she lifted the hem of her hakama.

Ichigo hissed at the sight of the bandage, a strip of black cloth hastily wrapped around her leg. The gash looked to be scabbed over, somewhat, but blood had dyed the cloth a musty brown.

He couldn’t stop the flinch of guilt as he yanked the door to the back room open, maybe far too hard, but he didn’t care. He’d thought, with his family out of the way and no distractions to be had, Rukia could’ve easily taken care of that Hollow. But instead, while he was curled up in Kisuke’s arms last night…

He should’ve been there instead.

“Come in,” he told the wall. He couldn’t face her right now. Where was Tessai when you needed him? At this time of the day, Tessai would usually be sorting through the accounts or out doing deliveries, but Ichigo had taken the van earlier so it couldn’t be the latter –

“Ichigo?” Kisuke was coming down the corridor, at too fast a pace to be called a walk but not quite an outright run. His hat was askew, like he’d been pulling at his hair in frustration. “Ichigo, what’s wrong, I felt your reiatsu –”

Kisuke didn’t quite _freeze_ , but his face did spasm slightly before settling into its usual mask. “Ah, shinigami-san, you’re here pretty early.”

“She’s hurt,” Ichigo interjected brusquely, glancing back at Rukia. “Can you heal her?”

Kisuke shot him a brief meaningful glance, one that wouldn’t have been picked up by anyone else. “Yes, certainly,” he segued smoothly, the false smile on his face never faltering.

“I can pay,” Rukia spoke up, before anyone could say anything else.

How was that even remotely the issue here? Ichigo opened his mouth, but then he caught sight of the warning in Kisuke’s eyes. Right. He didn’t get it at all, but if Kisuke thought it would be prudent, then Ichigo wasn’t going to say anything.

“This way please, shinigami-san.” Kisuke led Rukia into one of the spare guest rooms near the entrance of the shop, the ones he normally kept for unexpected visitors. “Ichigo, can you –”

“On it.” Ichigo crossed over to the nearest bathroom, grabbed a towel and filled a basin with water.

When he got back, Rukia was sitting on the tatami, her hakama rolled to above her knee, carefully unwinding the makeshift bandage from her leg.

“We’ll have to wash any dirt out of the wound first before we can start healing,” Kisuke warned her, waving at Ichigo to set everything down.

Rukia bit her lip and gamely nodded.

Ichigo knew what he had to do; had done it enough times – Karin after a football game, Chad after those thugs went after him again, Jinta after a particularly difficult fight with a Hollow. He scooped up some of the water with a small bowl, pouring it over the wound. Rukia’s face tightened, but she didn’t cry out, didn’t make a sound, even as blood and pus oozed out in a steady trickle.

And then Kisuke was covering the area with his own hands, suffusing it in a soft green glow.

Rukia made a surprised noise at the back of her throat.

“I didn’t know there were other shinigami in Karakura,” she said, eyeing the way the gash was knitting up. Kisuke wasn’t the best healer in the house – that particular honour had to go to Tessai – but he knew what he was doing.

Kisuke flicked her a look, deliberately bland.

“Well, we _are_ a shop for shinigami products,” Ichigo told her reasonably. “Makes more sense for us to be shinigami than human?”

She nodded, tentatively flexing her calf. “Thank you very much, Urahara-san! And, uh…”

It was like the worst case of déjà vu.

“My name is Kurosaki Ichigo,” he told her, hearing in his own voice the echoes of that fifteen-year-old he’d been, the yearning for a best friend he’d once had.

Rukia gave him her careful fake smile, the one she developed for her noble relatives.

Ichigo wanted to scream.

He pasted a smile on his face, busying himself with tidying up the dirtied bandages and carrying the basin out before he could accidentally let anything slip.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t trust Rukia. He knew her well enough that she could be convinced they were indeed from the future, even if it was a future that she couldn’t conceive right now: a future where she and Renji had reconciled, a future where Byakuya would seek her out for her company, a future where she stood tall and proud with her bankai settled upon her shoulders.

It was because Rukia would believe them, and then she would confront Aizen, and there was no way she could defeat him the way she was right now. There was no way _any_ of the captains, not even the Head Captain, could face Aizen the way they were right now, not when they had grown complacent and slow in their dotage.

Ichigo found himself standing in his bedroom without quite knowing how he’d gotten there, staring blankly at the back porch.

He was still holding that stupid basin.

He set it down in the bathroom, turned around, and nearly ran straight into Kisuke.

“Ichigo.”

“Don’t. Just.” He didn’t know how to verbalise what he needed, his belly roiling with too many emotions to name, but he didn’t have to. Kisuke’s arms came up around him, tugging Ichigo forwards into his chest.

“It’s Rukia,” he mumbled into Kisuke’s shoulder, getting a mouthful of cloth in the process.

“I know.” Kisuke sighed, his breath stirring Ichigo’s hair. It was weirdly soothing. “I know.”

~*~*~*~*~

Left alone in her new temporary lodgings, the scar on her leg already faded like it was a months-old injury instead of hours-old, Rukia wasn’t sure what to think.

Urahara and Kurosaki were… strange. Not like the kind of shinigami she was used to.

It wasn’t a bad kind of different, though.

Kurosaki had looked so _offended_ at the concept of payment, almost like – no. That couldn’t be.

She couldn’t even pin him down at first: he was obviously not human, since he could see her perfectly fine, but he was dressed in the strange restrictive garb only humans wear. A shinigami gone native? Rukia had no idea how long a merchant would be stationed for in the Transient World, but it was probably much longer than a normal shinigami’s rotation.

A few years, maybe? A few decades?

It ought to be decades, she decided, if Urahara brought his partner along.

There was no way Kurosaki could be anything else. For all his scowl and bluster and his strange, _strange_ ways, he’d barely needed an ounce of instruction to know what Urahara had needed from him. There was the fluid way they worked together, like they were an old married couple. And, of course:

_Ichigo? What’s wrong, I felt your reiatsu –_

She’d heard Urahara, of course, but it was common courtesy to pretend not to have. He wasn’t carrying a zanpakutō, but his fingers were lifted in what was clearly the starting position for at least half a dozen kidō spells Rukia could think of, just off the top of her head. And those words – they’d been together long enough for Urahara to learn the minute flickers of emotion in Kurosaki’s reiatsu, things so subtle that Rukia as a complete stranger couldn’t detect.

There was a knock on the door frame.

“Dinner’s at seven,” Kurosaki called through the door.

Dinner? She didn’t remember paying for meals on top of the lodgings, but she couldn’t find it in herself to decline. Forty years of being a Kuchiki couldn’t erase the memories of a century spent as a starving child, barely stealing enough food to get by.

“Got it!” she yelled back, and then slapped a hand over her mouth, stunned. Kuchiki didn’t raise their voices, like the common rabble.

Not even a day into her rotation, and she was already forgetting her lessons.

Rukia shook her head, settling into jinzen position on the mat, her Hollow pager laid out in front of her. Perhaps a meditative session was what she needed the most right now.

Another knock on the door frame brought her out of her reverie.

She shook her head, surprised to find the sky already dark.

No Hollows for the whole afternoon?

Karakura Town must be one of the oddly peaceful places…

Perhaps that was why she was assigned here. She knew her brother had a lot of sway with her captain, and perhaps that was enough to get her a quiet rotation.

“Kuchiki-dono?” There was a different voice at the door. “Dinner is ready.”

Rukia scrambled for the washroom, trying to make herself more presentable. No matter her inner feelings, it wouldn’t do for a Kuchiki to present themselves _unbecomingly_ as a guest.

It took her a few wrong turns, but by following her nose, she soon found the dining room.

The first thing that hit her was the _noise_.

Chopsticks hitting bowls, bare feet shuffling against tatami, plates thunking down the table.

The ebb and flow of chatter.

The sweetness of _laughter_.

“Oh! Did you adopt someone else, Ichi-nii?”

None of the children looked surprised, or even annoyed by the fact that they had to reshuffle themselves to make space for her. Or that she arrived late, or that she was dressed so very differently from them.

Rukia found herself standing in a corner of the living room, her back to the fusuma panels, without quite knowing how she got there. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, trying in vain to stop the shaking.

She hadn’t… hadn’t thought about Rukongai in _decades_.

A rustle at the door alerted her that she was no longer alone.

Kurosaki looked to be focused on sliding the door to the dining room shut, his back conveniently turned, and she was grateful for the consideration, the chance to try to pull herself together.

Whatever her surname was, Rukia had always _hated_ showing weakness in front of a stranger.

“There’s… so many of them,” she said faintly, and it was both an explanation and an apology.

She could tell that Kurosaki didn’t understand. “Everyone’s welcome under our roof,” he told her blithely, as if that was at all normal. Nobody, not even the most kind-hearted, took in starving spiritually-aware children from the streets. _Everyone_ in Soul Society knew that those children attracted hungry Hollows like flies. If the children didn’t accidentally kill you with their uncontrolled burgeoning reiatsu, the Hollows would.

“Come on, your dinner’s going to get cold if you keep standing here like this.”

Those kids… there was no way they belonged to him and Urahara. For one, Rukia was pretty sure men couldn’t give birth. For another, blond and orange didn’t make black – although to be fair, she’d seen far stranger combination results in Seireitei.

Kurosaki Ichigo was, somehow, a complete anomaly.

Rukia swallowed.

Abruptly, she missed Renji so badly that it _hurt_ , like a sword through the abdomen.

After this assignment, she was going to hunt Renji down, maybe take him to dinner at a nice izakaya or something. It didn’t matter that the Kuchiki elders would probably look down upon her for doing so, that it was beneath a Kuchiki to associate with a ruffian from the Eleventh. Rukia had been an Abarai long before she became a Kuchiki, and that meant Renji was her family _first_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You… what?”  
> Ichigo pinched himself again, for good measure. Maybe he was still asleep. That would certainly make more sense than waking up in Kisuke’s arms, despite the fact that the sun had already risen, and hearing something like _that_ come out of his mouth.  
>  “A date.” Kisuke’s lips twisted wryly. There was no fan to hide his face behind, no hat shadowing his eyes, no sing-song tone to pass it off as a joke.  
> He looked, sounded, and felt absolutely _serious_ , even if the words themselves made no sense.  
> It was way too early for mind games. Ichigo groaned, rubbing his cheek against the pillows. He wished Kisuke could just say what he meant sometimes. Did he need a volunteer for some reiatsu experiments again?  
> The fingers carding through his hair stopped moving.  
> “Ichigo.”  
> “Mmmph?”  
> “I meant exactly what I said.”

The sky was still dark when Kisuke opened his eyes.

Breaths stirred the hairs at the nape of his neck, and a warm weight was thrown carelessly over his waist, fingers just barely brushing against the bare skin of his belly.

 _Vulnerable_ , hissed the assassin, miming the stab of a dagger, swift and soundless.

 _A liability_ , whispered the captain, head bowed in betrayal.

Kisuke rolled over and buried his face in Ichigo's neck.

He could get up.

He _should_ get up.

The Hōgyoku wasn't going to destroy itself.

But Tessai had pulled him aside, yesterday afternoon, and strongly suggested he leave the lab work until after breakfast.

 _“The children are growing concerned, Tench_ _ō. They worry if you and Shach_ _ō are fighting.”_

That was patently untrue, of course.

But, perhaps, the idea had merit.

If he hadn’t found a solution in the past six years, he wasn’t likely to find it in the next scant few hours, especially since he had no fresh ideas at the moment.

It wasn’t like watching Ichigo sleep was a chore, either – far from it. In sleep, his brow was smoothed over, the worry lines vanishing. Ichigo didn’t stir, not even when Kisuke ran a hand through that mess of orange spikes he called hair.

Coming from a man who could awaken at the mere snap of a twig, this demonstration of sheer trust was _humbling_.

Kisuke shifted on the bed. There was something sweet and warm fluttering in the pit of his abdomen, like a thousand butterflies struggling to get free.

Nine years.

Nine years and eleven (and counting, if he knew Ichigo at all) children.

He didn't think he'd ever get over the realisation that out of everyone he could’ve had, everyone else who was perhaps more suited, Ichigo chose _him_.

The first rays of the late spring sun peeked through the windows, wreathing Ichigo’s hair like a golden crown.

Kisuke chuckled. Tessai was right, as usual. One day wouldn’t hurt.

In fact…

When was the last time they spent the day together, actually?

He didn’t remember.

Kisuke exhaled.

Maybe it wasn’t the right time for such things, but then, when _was_ the right time? One could argue that as long as the Hōgyoku lay whole, as long as Aizen walked freely through the streets of Seireitei, there were more important things to worry about. Before he met Kurosaki Ichigo, Kisuke would have wholeheartedly agreed.

But after Aizen’s defeat? Soul Society was always going to have another crisis.

It was never going to be the _right_ time.

If he learnt anything at all, it was that taking a break wasn’t just an excuse to procrastinate.

~*~*~*~*~

“You… what?”

Ichigo pinched himself again, for good measure. Maybe he was still asleep. That would certainly make more sense than waking up in Kisuke’s arms, despite the fact that the sun had already risen, and hearing something like _that_ come out of his mouth.

“A date.” Kisuke’s lips twisted wryly. There was no fan to hide his face behind, no hat shadowing his eyes, no sing-song tone to pass it off as a joke.

He looked, sounded, and felt absolutely _serious_ , even if the words themselves made no sense.

It was way too early for mind games. Ichigo groaned, rubbing his cheek against the pillows. He wished Kisuke could just _say_ what he meant sometimes. Did he need a volunteer for some reiatsu experiments again?

The fingers carding through his hair stopped moving.

“Ichigo.”

“Mmmph?”

“I meant exactly what I said.”

The bed was nice and warm, and it was a Sunday so he didn’t have to walk the twins to school. What did Kisuke say again?

“Wait.” Ichigo jerked his head out of the pillows, almost colliding with Kisuke’s chin. “ _Seriously_?”

A date?

When was the last time they went on a date?

“But what about the Hōgyoku?” He suddenly remembered. “You’ve already found a way to destroy it?”

He knew, of course he knew why Kisuke had been cooping himself up in his lab for days, weeks at a time, only surfacing when he was dragged out for meals.

The Hōgyoku.

The precursor to all their troubles.

If Kisuke could find a way to destroy it, could ensure Aizen would never get his hands on it, then their job was pretty much done. Without the source of his immortality, Aizen was but one single shinigami: one whom Ichigo, or Yamamoto, or even _Ichimaru Gin_ , could defeat – and rest assured that he _stayed_ defeated.

Slowly, Kisuke shook his head.

Ichigo didn’t get it. “Then why?”

“You’re the one who taught me to make time for what’s important to me.”

It took Ichigo a moment to understand what Kisuke meant, and he blamed it on the fact that he was still half-asleep.

“You…” Ichigo swallowed, lips tugging upwards involuntarily. He probably looked really stupid, but it was just Kisuke. Kisuke, who’d seen him broken and bleeding and ecstatic and everything in-between; Kisuke, to whom he’d entrusted his sisters without a shred of hesitation.

He could tell that Kisuke didn’t understand his reaction by the faint puzzled quirk of his brows, but that was okay. “It’s a _good_ thing,” he added, but he wasn’t sure how to explain it. The knowledge that Urahara Kisuke – several hundred years older and definitely far wiser, although Kisuke himself would beg to disagree – would change his ingrained habits just because of something Ichigo once said?

Sometimes, it just hit him all over again how much he loved this man.

“I’d love to spend the day with you.” Ichigo grinned, sort of ruefully. “Although I’m not sure what we can do, since we’re stuck in the shop like this.”

Maybe they could spar. It had been too long since Zangetsu had sang against Benihime.

Strangely enough, Kisuke’s brow creased further in confusion. “Why can’t we go out?”

“Eh?” To say that Ichigo was surprised was to put it lightly. “But the camera-flies… wouldn’t Aizen notice that I’m no longer fifteen?”

Kisuke blinked.

Ichigo felt distinctly out of the loop, which didn’t happen very often nowadays, now that he was no longer new to this shinigami business.

“Ichigo- _san_.” The drawl in Kisuke’s voice caught his attention, as did the honorific – Kisuke only brought those out when he was trying to tease Ichigo for something or other. “If _Hirako Shinji_ can pass off as fifteen, there’s no reason you can’t.”

Ichigo scrunched up his forehead.

Well, if _that_ was what a shinigami thought a fifteen-year-old looked like.

He looked down at himself. It had been a long time since he’d gone about in a gigai, ever since Yuzu gained the ability to see spirits – probably too much exposure to his reiatsu, just like Chad and Inoue had, in a future that would never come to pass.

“Yeah, all right.”

It was worth _anything_ to see Kisuke’s beautiful eyes light up in a real smile.

~*~*~*~*~

… maybe it wasn’t worth _this_.

Maybe he should have reconsidered letting Kisuke pick the place, considering that Ichigo at least had nineteen years of experience as a human and Kisuke had none.

“This is…”

NANA’S GREEN TEA, proclaimed the shop name.

“A confectionery shop?” Ichigo asked, a little helplessly. “We haven’t even had lunch yet!”

Or breakfast, as his growling stomach informed him.

Silently, Kisuke pointed to the menu, which did, in fact include several food items. There was curry, which was nice. Nobody could screw up curry; although nobody made curry as good as Yuzu’s.

Then Kisuke moved his finger – and, well. All right, he could see why Kisuke had picked this particular shop.

Mmm, chocolate. “Should I be worried why you feel the need to bribe me? Did you secretly do something I won’t approve of again?” Chocolate parfait, chocolate ganache, chocolate… iced chocolate? He hoped it was good.

Kisuke was _definitely_ hiding a smile behind that fan.

“You wound me so, Ichigo-san.” His voice wasn’t _quite_ a whine, but it was close. “Would I really do that?”

Ichigo squinted at him. “Well, yeah, duh?”

It didn’t stop him from following Kisuke into the shop, getting shown into one of the corner booths, or picking three chocolate desserts though. During the war, sweets had been a _luxury_ , one jealously hoarded by the Shinigami Women’s Association – especially Rukia, with her notorious sweet tooth.

And then, after her death, it didn’t feel right to eat them.

His brows flew up at the first spoonful of parfait. “Try it.” He shoved the cup at Kisuke with one hand, too busy licking his spoon clean. “It’s really good,” he mumbled around the spoon, trying to get that last bit of fudge off.

Kisuke didn’t immediately take the cup, not even when Ichigo gave it an impatient shake. He looked sort of dazed, staring blankly at Ichigo. Maybe he was thinking about that damned Hōgyoku again.

Wasn’t the _purpose_ of this date to make him forget about that stupid stone? Ichigo picked up a square of ganache, but instead of taking the first bite he shoved the spoon at Kisuke instead. Chocolate had those endorphin things that made you happy, right?

Kisuke blinked rapidly, coming out of his reverie. He opened his mouth to say something – if it was anything along the lines of ‘I had a brain wave and need to get back to the lab _immediately_ Ichigo was going to deck him – and then closed it again, giving his head a little shake.

Good.

“Try it,” Ichigo urged again.

Kisuke lowered his head, catching Ichigo’s wrist to hold it steady as he guided the spoon into his mouth. He was smiling, for some reason.

In retaliation, Ichigo stole one of Kisuke’s matcha warabimochi.

Kisuke pouted at him, but his eyes were dancing.

Ichigo grinned down helplessly into his parfait, like he was twenty again and just kissed Kisuke for the first time.

Except Kisuke back then would _never_ have dared to steal one of his chocolates.

Ichigo’s eyes narrowed.

Oh, it was _so_ on.

Somehow, they managed to get through the desserts without spilling any, and they were as good as Ichigo had hoped. He made a mental note to bring Karin and Yuzu next time. Maybe even all the kids? There was enough variety to please anybody, even if they – the utter blasphemy – didn’t like chocolate.

He gazed out of the window, idly licking the last bit of parfait off his spoon.

Wait, wasn’t that… Rukia?

She must’ve seen him too, her steps just faltered.

Ichigo waved.

Tentatively, she waved back at him.

Ichigo pointed at the empty seat beside him.

Rukia’s mouth moved in something he couldn’t hear. A refusal? An apology? It didn’t matter, there were no Hollows nearby, or Kisuke would’ve mentioned it, date or no date. They’d long since realised that with a distinct lack of reiatsu-rich individuals walking around (namely, a young Ichigo leaking reiatsu like a sieve), Hollows were far less attracted to Karakura than they used to be.

Ichigo pointed again, more insistently, and this time Rukia gave in.

The bell tinkled as she came through the doors, slipping into the booth next to him.

Ichigo sipped his iced chocolate, trying not to make it too obvious that he was staring. Rukia didn’t seem to notice, at least, busy poring over the menu. This was her first time in the Transient World, he remembered with a pang.

His mouth twisted, and he stared down at the table to cover that up.

This Rukia was nothing like the woman he remembered, all raw edges and hesitancy where his Rukia was fearless and headstrong, but now and then _something_ would shine through, something that hinted at the inner strength he _knew_ she had.

And Ichigo... Ichigo didn’t know how to fix that. He didn’t know how to give Rukia the opportunities she needed to grow as a person, when his very goal in this timeline was to erase any chance of Aizen starting the Winter War one more time, thereby robbing her of those experiences.

Under the table, Kisuke’s knee bumped against his.

Ichigo exhaled. Kisuke was right, he should worry about _that_ another time, after Aizen was dead and gone.

After all, it wasn’t just Rukia, it was at least half the Gotei. And the Visoreds would all need pardons too, of course – again. Maybe some of them would take up their original positions again; hell knew, Kyōraku had planned to offer it back to them, before communications got cut off.

The Third had gone to Renji in the end, both because Ikkaku would sooner cut off his arm than leave Zaraki, and because Kira had apparently known Renji since their Academy days and trusted him implicitly. And oh, he’d tried, but he’d been a lieutenant for all of a year, and Byakuya hadn’t even started grooming him for a future captaincy yet.

_“Fighting, that I can do, no problem. Teaching, well, maybe –” Renji had confided in private to Ichigo, once. “But budgeting? Meting out the appropriate punishment? Raising troop morale?” He spread his hands, shaking his head. “If I make a mistake, I’ll get hundreds of my own people killed.”_

_Ichigo had patted him on the shoulder, but he had even less of a clue what advice to offer. It wasn’t like Shinji or whoever relied on him to come up with strategies._

The waitress came by with Rukia’s order, successfully rousing Ichigo from his reverie. He hid a grin, turning his head to look casually out of the window.

“What… is this?”

Right on cue. His lips tug upwards at the expression on Rukia’s face, reflected in the glass.

“Parfait,” he explains, glancing over at her. “It’s a frozen dessert made with rich cream, sweets and sometimes fruits.”

This might not be _his_ Rukia, but she still reacts in the exact same way.

“I had no idea the Transient World has come so far in the development of culinary arts,” she mumbled around her spoon, totally missing the way Ichigo exchanged a look with Kisuke.

He’d have to pick up some juice boxes on the way home.

And maybe make it up to Kisuke for the way he accidentally derailed their date, even though he knew Kisuke of all people would understand. If it were him, Ichigo wouldn’t have turned away Yoruichi-san’s presence either.

But still.

Perhaps a spar? They hadn’t trained together for a while.

Ichigo stretched his arms over his head. He still trained on his own, of course, but there was nothing quite like having a sparring partner, someone he could go all-out against and not worry about killing accidentally.

What would he have done, had he been sent back in time on his own?

Ichigo suppressed a shudder. Probably grown depressed and suicidal, he supposed, with no one to keep the worst of the dark thoughts and memories at bay, no one to hold him after he woke up screaming from an all-too-real nightmare.

Kisuke’s knee brushed up against his own, under the table. _Is everything okay?_

Ichigo smiled.

Yeah, yeah it was.

~*~*~*~*~

“Interested in a little wager?”

An eyebrow raised. Oh, Ichigo was definitely interested, he could tell, especially if it was their standard –

“Usual terms?” Ichigo clarified, already unsheathing Zangetsu.

Exactly what Kisuke was thinking. “Certainly.”

Slowly, a smirk bloomed across Ichigo’s face. “You’re _on_.” He leapt backwards, putting some distance between them. “Ten ni nobori –”

Shikai off the bat? Smart.

“– hōgyoku o kasume –”

Not that it would help him. Ichigo was going to have to work  _much_ harder than that if he wanted that blowjob.

“Ōkasen!” Kisuke barked, but Ichigo was already flash-stepping away, lowering his voice to a bare whisper as he finished his shikai release chant.

As if that’d deter Kisuke. Out of his usual reiatsu-suppressing gigai, Ichigo glowed like a miniature sun to his senses, no matter how hard Ichigo tried to hide it. Kisuke would’ve been able to find him blind and deaf, and Ichigo _knew_ that –

Benihime sang in anticipation, Kamisori scything through three boulders in a row, and through the dust he saw Ichigo spin into another flash-step, flitting through the debris.

Kisuke grinned, taking up a more defensive style. Once he finished releasing shikai, Ichigo always preferred to go on the offensive, so he should be making a move right about…

Now!

Chikasumi no Tate sprang up around him, right before a Getsuga Jūjishō would have taken off his head. Ichigo was certainly not pulling his punches; that was the same amount of force he’d put behind a blow meant for any Espada. Kisuke ducked, not bothering to fight his instincts.

“ _Nake_ ,” he snapped out, and the hairline cracks spiderwebbing through the shield knitted themselves back together.

Ichigo was already on the move, trying to get around his shield, but Kisuke had anticipated that too, the blood mist shield curving around him. It shattered under the impact, but it had served its purpose, bought Kisuke the time to turn, to raise Benihime to catch Zangetsu.

“Tenran,” he hissed, and had the pleasure of watching Ichigo’s eyes widen in alarm, watch him try to disengage – he didn’t make it in time, and the resultant hurricane blasted him straight into – no, through – the nearest cliff.

Kisuke, too, wasn’t going easy on him.

He ducked the next Getsuga Tenshō, Benihime at the ready, as Ichigo came flying through the air at a speed too fast for even junior captains to react to. Instead of meeting Zangetsu with his zanpakutō, as Ichigo no doubt expected, Kisuke stabbed it into the ground and used it as a lever to forcibly change directions, slamming feet-first into Ichigo’s chest.

Ichigo spat out a mouthful of blood, staggering back.

Kisuke rushed forwards. The thing about Ichigo was that one had to press _every_ minute advantage, or it would be lost immediately –

Benihime slashed down, and in that moment Kisuke knew he had miscalculated.

He spun before the afterimage finished shattering, but it was already too late, Ichigo was already upon him, and he couldn’t quite bring his zanpakutō back around in time.

“Yield?” Ichigo demanded.

Kisuke’s free hand was trapped behind his back, locked down by Ichigo’s weight on his waist. Similarly, his other wrist was pinned against the ground. He flexed that wrist, testing.

Ichigo frowned and shifted his weight slightly, warningly.

Kisuke let his zanpakutō go.

 _Senjū no hate_ , he thought, careful to enunciate the words in his mind, watching Ichigo for any subtle changes in his expression. _Todokazaru yami no mite_ –

Ichigo rolled his hips, grinding lightly into Kisuke’s lap, and the incantation for Senjū Kōten Taihō completely flew out of his mind.

But his body was already moving, a lifetime of muscle memory serving him well where his higher brain functions had deserted him, and that moment of inattention was all Kisuke needed to flip them over.

Ichigo stared up at him, chest heaving and pupils blown wide.

“Yield?”

Ichigo’s eyes narrowed, like he was about to refuse out of sheer bull-headedness. Then that moment passed, and Kisuke could feel Ichigo relax underneath him, bit by bit.

“Yeah,” Ichigo conceded grudgingly.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “That too,” Ichigo agreed. He stared up at the ceiling. “It was a bad time, but when Kisuke and I got together, he looked at me like I was _just me_.” Just Ichigo-the-person, not Ichigo-the-ultimate-weapon, not Ichigo-their-final-hope.
> 
> He remembered the nights they stayed up talking instead of sleeping like they should, when they were just Kisuke and Ichigo instead of General Urahara and War Icon. The nights when Kisuke kept sending Ichigo these soft looks that Ichigo at first couldn’t comprehend, and then later didn’t know how to respond to. _That_ particular night when Ichigo – he couldn’t even remember what they were talking about, but Kisuke’s arm was brushing up against his own with every exhale and there was an entire wriggling _nest_ in the pit of Ichigo’s belly, and it was late enough – or they were tired enough – that Ichigo threw all caution to the wind and climbed into Kisuke’s lap, cutting him off mid-word.

The opening of a Senkaimon nearby flooded the night with reiatsu.

Rukia scrambled to her feet. She hadn’t – nothing in her missives from Soul Society had indicated a visitor was nigh, and she wasn’t due to be relieved until _next_ week. Had something happened back home?

As she neared the park, her footsteps slowed. That reiatsu… she knew who it belonged to.

In fact, she knew _both_ of them.

“Nii-sama,” she greeted in abject confusion, landing on the grass. “What brings you here?”

As usual, her brother didn’t so much as glance at her. He stared out at the river instead, almost like… he was deep in contemplation?

Rukia forced herself into stillness, even though all she wanted was some answers. There was no way her brother or – or _him_ – was here as her replacement; at the very least, she would be expecting someone from the Thirteenth: if they had to send a ranking officer, it would’ve been Kiyone-sanseki or Sentarō-sanseki. There was no need to send a _captain_ , and of a different division, no less – even if it was her brother!

And then Renji stepped out of her brother’s shadow.

The decades had been kind to him, was Rukia’s first thought. And then –

“You’re the new lieutenant of the Sixth?”

She couldn’t deny that her first emotion was jealousy. They’d all entered the Academy at around the same time, all achieved shikai, and yet –

And yet.

Hinamori, Kira, Hisagi – they had all become lieutenants, one by one: the Fifth, the Third, the Ninth. She’d even been quietly glad, she was ashamed to admit, glad that Renji hadn’t been amongst that exalted number, glad that they had this much in common between them, even if it was something as petty as this.

But now…

Now even Renji was a lieutenant, while Rukia remained an unseated member of an understaffed division.

Rukia wanted to scream.

But she looked up at his face, and saw – he was looking back at her, his dark eyes serious and worried, brows knitted faintly. Sometime in the four decades since she’d seen him, the boy she had known had grown into a man, but it was still _Renji_.

He deserved better from her.

“Congratulations on your promotion,” she said, the words stiff and awkward on her tongue. She forced herself to keep her eyes on Renji, refusing to glance over at her brother, refusing to check what his reaction was.

Her name was Rukia, and she had made a promise to herself in the chill of the twilight moon, screamed it to the skies in the dead of the night, and she was going to _stand by it_. Brother or not, if she couldn’t even handle the disapproval of one Kuchiki, how was she going to hold her head up high when faced with an entire clan of elders?

Renji’s eyes widened in genuine shock.

“Thanks,” he replied, equally awkwardly. His hand twitched in an aborted motion, like he wanted to scratch the back of his head in embarrassment, the way he used to.

Right. Because nervous tics were below a Kuchiki, and the lieutenant of the Sixth Division might as well be a Kuchiki representative.

 _Never again_ , she promised herself. The Kuchiki had given her everything she could’ve wished for as a little girl – dry clothes, a warm hearth, and as much food as she could shovel into her mouth – but the price they’ve demanded was too high.

She still didn’t know why nii-sama had adopted her forty years ago, and she didn’t think anything short of the apocalypse was going to reveal that. But she was done abandoning the person she’d grown up with, who stole blankets for her in winter and candy for her when she was too sick to move, who packed up his three meagre possessions and walked barefoot through seventy-eight districts of Rukongai just because she wanted to become a shinigami.

“Rukia.”

She gritted her teeth, refusing to lower her head. If her brother had a problem with her choice of friends, he was going to have to say that to her face.

“Central Forty-Six has decreed that you have been found guilty of consorting with criminals. You are to return with us for questioning at once.”

_What?_

* * *

Renji didn’t rise from his picture-perfect ninety-degree bow until Kuchiki-taichō had left through the Senkaimon, Rukia in tow.

Rukia.

That had been genuine shock and betrayal on her face, he could tell.

She hadn’t known.

She’d be fine. On Taichō’s orders, Renji had personally arranged for a cell in the Sixth’s prison, one of those cells meant for nobles. In the morning, one of those Central bastards would send a retainer, ask her some questions, give her a slap on the wrist, and she’d be back at the Thirteenth in no time at all.

_Congratulations on your promotion._

He knew what Rukia’s false Kuchiki-cultivated smile looked like, and that wasn’t it.

It was awkward, tentative, but it was _real_.

She’d meant what she said.

For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what had happened in the past couple of days to cause such a huge change in Rukia’s attitude towards him, but he could always ask her that when he got back tomorrow.

Renji spun on his heel, one hand dropping to the hilt of Zabimaru. Taichō had left him behind to cover for Rukia until the Thirteenth could send over a replacement shinigami tomorrow, but what Taichō didn’t know was that Renji had his own agenda for staying behind tonight.

He shoved his free hand into his pocket, crushing a piece of paper between his fingers.

 _Urahara Shōten_ , it said, along with directions on how to get to the shop.

Renji didn’t know how those damned criminals figured out who Rukia was, or what they wanted with her, but it didn’t matter. He was going to find them, and he was going to make them _rue_ the day they set their sights upon her.

He stopped in front of a shop, its shutters already drawn in deference to the late hour.

Renji looked up at the sign, sounding the kanji out carefully. URA-HARA, it said. This had to be the place.

He walked up to the door, and then, drawing upon everything he’d learnt at the Eleventh, kicked the door down.

The door splintered inwards with a satisfying crash. Renji marched through, a hand on the hilt of his zanpakutō, keeping his eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary. He couldn’t let his guard down; any criminal worthy of the attention of Central Forty-Six had to be powerful.

Already, he could hear the sound of pounding footsteps, getting nearer. An orange-haired man ducked through the doors, dressed in a plain sleep robe, rubbing at his eyes like there’s nothing wrong, like Rukia wasn’t facing execution because of him, and Renji just –

– saw _red_.

Zabimaru was out of its sheath before he scarcely thought about it, slashing down at the criminal’s neck.

The criminal had the audacity to look _confused_ , eyes wide and scrambling to duck.

Renji sneered. A mere _merchant_ , dodging his blade?

Hah!

If this Urahara man was just a simple shopkeeper, Renji would _eat_ his sword.

“Not so brave now, are you?” he demanded, pressing his advantage. This Urahara guy had no weapon in hand, none on his person that Renji could tell, which meant he could do nothing but weave around Zabimaru’s attacks.

Renji sped up. He was going to beat the snot of this bastard, figure out what he planned to do with a Kuchiki, and make him rue the day he ever set his sights of Rukia. She might not have spoken to him for decades, but she was still the only _family_ he had left.

“Ichigo-san?”

That was –

Renji stuttered to an abrupt halt.

That was a _child_ ’s voice.

The little girl was barely visible, peering cautiously through the still-open doors that led to the interior of the shop.

“We heard shouting. Is everything okay?”

We?

Before Renji could voice his confusion, there were more tiny heads popping through the doors, expressions ranging from timid to wary to angry. They could definitely see him, judging from the way that black-haired girl was glaring at him, like she would gladly run him through with a zanpakutō if she had one. His grip on Zabimaru’s hilt loosened.

Spiritually-aware children?

Of no relation to this Urahara Ichigo, Renji could see at a glance.

Adopted? Fostered?

That didn’t matter.

He couldn’t sense anything above a basal level of reiatsu from any of them, which meant they were, at best, Academy student level. Just spiritually aware enough to get hungry, but not strong enough to protect themselves.

The worst kind of nightmare.

Come to think about it, wasn’t District 3600 the current jūreichi? It was why only shinigami who possessed shikai were ever sent to patrol this district, Renji remembered. It would make sense, then, to have so many spiritually aware children roaming the streets.

Or, he supposed, in this case – under one roof.

Having so many spiritual beings in one location should, logically, have summoned a never-ending horde of Hollows to the shop, and yet Renji hadn’t sensed a single one this whole night.

Belatedly, he tamped down on his own reiatsu. If nothing else, his little display just now should have attracted a Hollow or two, but his pager was still as silent as the grave, which meant – wards. Strong wards, enough to conceal… at least eight children, plus Urahara himself.

Come to think of it, Renji couldn’t sense anything from Urahara, but he didn’t so much as flinch at Renji’s reiatsu just now, which could only mean one thing: Urahara had much more reiatsu than he did. And he didn’t mean to sound boastful, but Renji was well aware that he had almost enough reiatsu to qualify for captaincy in perhaps a mere decade or two; it was one of the reasons why Kuchiki-taichō had seen fit to pick an Eleventh ruffian as his lieutenant.

Wards put up by a captain-class shinigami? No wonder the shop was unbothered by the high density of spiritual beings. Renji had seen Kuchiki-taichō take down regular Hollows before, and they might as well have been flies to him.

“Ichigo.” A blond man came through the doors, heedless of the way Renji’s zanpakutō was still drawn. “Why don’t you put the children back to bed, and I’ll settle Fukutaichō-san?” He turned a stern look upon Renji, eyes glancing over the armband Renji had honestly forgotten he was still wearing. “I trust that Fukutaichō-san will explain his reasons for being here like a proper member of the Sixth, without any further unnecessary violence?”

Renji blushed hotly, shoving Zabimaru back into its sheath, but there were some things he refused to back down on.

“I want to speak to Urahara,” he informed them stubbornly.

The blond smiled disarmingly at him, snapping open a fan he pulled out of nowhere. “Urahara Kisuke, at your service.”

Wait, then –

“Who are _you_?” Renji demanded of the man whom the kids had called ‘Ichigo’.

Said man was kneeling on the floor, conversing softly with several of the younger kids, and Renji’s pride itched at the dismissive way he presented his back to Renji without a second thought.

One of the younger girls tugged on Ichigo’s sleeve, pointing silently at Renji.

He turned his head around, still on his knees.

“My name is Kurosaki Ichigo,” he said, and there was a wealth of emotion in his eyes that Renji couldn’t understand.

* * *

“Tea, Fukutaichō-san?”

“Er.” Abarai visible startled, and then equally visibly schooled his expression. “Sure. Please?”

He hadn’t been a lieutenant for long, Kisuke remembered. Just a few weeks or so, and it was no wonder he was so different from the Abarai Renji with whom Kisuke was familiar, the one who wore his authority upon his shoulders as effortlessly as his bankai cape.

Bankai probably didn’t even feature except in this Abarai’s fever dreams yet.

“Ichigo will need a few minutes to put all the kids to bed,” he explained, setting a cup of tea in front of Abarai, his movements quick and sure. By the way Abarai’s eyes were lingering on his hands, he could tell that Abarai had noticed, and had filed the information away.

Good. Every little advantage could only work in their favour right now.

Kisuke hadn’t quite accounted for Kuchiki Rukia getting called up on bogus charges, but this could only mean that Aizen was operating under false parameters. Once she returned to Soul Society and he took note of her strong reiatsu reserves, he’d understand that she couldn’t possibly have merged with the Hōgyoku. He’d probably be desperate, wondering what had become of Kurosaki Ichigo, what had become of the Hōgyoku.

And desperate men made _mistakes_.

Mistakes that Kisuke fully intended to capitalise upon.

“I presume you’re here to collect Kuchiki-san’s belongings on her behalf?”

Abarai’s eyes widened. “Belongings?”

“Yes, after all, she _has_ been staying here for the past month. I believe she has purchased several articles of clothing, a few sketchbooks, and some posters of baby rabbits. Surely she will be pleased for them to be returned.”

His words only made Abarai’s expression harden. “Rukia’s facing charges of treason and potentially execution,” he argued, even though Kisuke could tell he didn’t really believe the latter would come true. “You’ve convinced me to hear you out, but you haven’t given me any proof that you aren’t criminals.”

Criminals? Well, Kisuke supposed that he _was_ one, by Soul Society standards. Luckily, he had the perfect solution to that little problem.

“As an officially licensed Transient World merchant, naturally, our shop has a certificate of authenticity signed by the Sōtaichō himself. Surely that would suffice as proof?”

* * *

Ichigo glanced down at the text message Kisuke just sent him. Detained for consorting with criminals, huh. It seemed like Aizen had his eyes set on Rukia no matter what.

“Is everything okay, Ichi-nii?”

“Yeah,” he responded automatically, tucking the phone away. “Come on, you all need to get back to bed, there’s still one last day of school tomorrow before summer break starts.”

He paused, and thought about the last line in the text.

_Say goodbye to the kids, you’ll probably be leaving for Soul Society tonight._

Yeah, Renji wouldn’t wait a single moment once he had that certificate in hand, for sure.

“Our guest for the past month, Rukia, has just been called back to Soul Society because the bad guy thinks she’s got something he wants,” he began with no fanfare. “I’m probably have to go to Soul Society for a few days to save her, okay?”

“Why do _you_ have to do it?”

“Be careful, Ichigo-san!”

“I’ll come with you.”

Ichigo resisted the urge to sigh. “Because nobody over there knows he’s the bad guy,” he explained patiently. “I’m going to have to knock some heads together before they’ll see sense.”

There was another barrage of comments, but the kids all seemed pretty resigned to the idea and were just protesting for the sake of it. Maybe it was the late hour. Even Chad backed down from insisting he’d go too when Ichigo – aided by a conveniently-timed text message from Kisuke – informed him that only full spiritual beings like himself could enter Soul Society.

There was no need for him to know that Kisuke could easily bypass that little problem, none at all.

One by one, the older teenagers trooped back to bed, and then Jinta and Ururu, until it was just Ichigo’s sisters left.

Karin slipped into her bed on her own, tugging her blankets up to her chin while Ichigo busied himself with tucking Yuzu in.

“Ichi-nii.”

Ichigo looked up at the foreboding tone in Karin’s voice. She hesitated, swallowing.

Yuzu leaned over the scant inch separating their beds and took her hand.

“We’ll be alone with Kisuke-san for a few days while you sort Rukia-san out,” Karin finally chose to say.

“Uh huh?” Ichigo prompted, when it didn’t look like she was going to continue.

“We’re eleven years old now, we’re _teenagers_ ,” Yuzu piped up, but when Ichigo glanced at her she was worrying her lower lip.

“Does Kisuke-san make you happy?”

Ichigo blinked.

“Huh?”

What kind of question was _that_?

“You don’t have to lie to us to protect us, Ichi-nii,” Yuzu was telling him earnestly, when he blinked away enough of the shock to focus on her. “We’re old enough to handle it.”

“What… what even gave you that impression?”

Karin cringed a little. “Well, because at the time, right after our parents passed away, we didn’t have anywhere to go – and when Kisuke-san offered to take us in you looked so… surprised?”

Had he? Ichigo didn’t remember much of those early days, truth be told – between the insomnia and the nightmares of the war, and making sure the girls had a roof over their heads and someone to walk them to school…

Had they been worrying about him for so long?

“We didn’t think much of it at the time,” Yuzu agreed meekly, “but later on, seeing Kisuke-san always busy in his lab and you taking care of all of us, we just… wondered, sometimes. If Ichi-nii was doing it just to give us a home.”

Ichigo opened his mouth, and then closed it. Shook his head.

“No – no, I’m not,” he decided to tackle the biggest concern first. “I’ve known Kisuke since I was fifteen, been _with_ him since I was… nineteen? Twenty? Thereabouts, I think.”

Ichigo hopped up onto the bed next to Yuzu, so that he could reach over and put an arm around both of them.

“The war was bad,” he summarised. “The bad guy was – well, he’d made himself immortal, somehow, and nothing we did could keep him down. Seal him, _kill_ him – he just kept coming back, like some sort of insane butterfly.”

Karin wrinkled her nose. “Don’t you mean _cockroach_ , Ichi-nii?”

“That too,” Ichigo agreed. He stared up at the ceiling. “It was a bad time, but when Kisuke and I got together, he looked at me like I was _just_ _me_.” Just Ichigo-the-person, not Ichigo-the-ultimate-weapon, not Ichigo-their-final-hope.

He remembered the nights they stayed up talking instead of sleeping like they should, when they were just Kisuke and Ichigo instead of General Urahara and War Icon. The nights when Kisuke kept sending Ichigo these soft looks that Ichigo at first couldn’t comprehend, and then later didn’t know how to respond to. _That_ particular night when Ichigo – he couldn’t even remember what they were talking about, but Kisuke’s arm was brushing up against his own with every exhale and there was an entire wriggling _nest_ in the pit of Ichigo’s belly, and it was late enough – or they were tired enough – that Ichigo threw all caution to the wind and climbed into Kisuke’s lap, cutting him off mid-word.

He remembered Kisuke lying underneath him, hat and fan both missing, pupils blown wide and lips a shiny bitten-red, staring up at him like Ichigo’s the most precious jewel he’d ever seen.

“He tried to send me back alone, you know,” Ichigo revealed, addressing the ceiling. “Said it would’ve been safer, he could destroy the machine afterwards to make sure Aizen can’t follow me back.” He exhaled. “I told him no, either we both come back or neither of us at all.” He didn’t regret that decision, not the slightest bit. “He’s the _best thing to ever happen to me_ – other than the two of you, of course –” the girls giggled “– and if I had to come back and face a version of him who treats me like a stranger…”

Ichigo trailed off, and didn’t continue that thought.

It didn’t happen, anyway.

“Kisuke… he didn’t really have the best childhood,” he divulged, figuring his lover wouldn’t mind the girls knowing this little bit. “So he’s not really sure what to do when faced with children. I’m sorry if he’s come across as distant to you guys, but he really does enjoy having you all around.” It wasn’t a white lie; Kisuke had implied as much.

“So when I’m away in Soul Society, if you’ve got any problem – even if it’s just homework or whatever – don’t be afraid to go ask him, all right?”

He risked a glance down at the girls. Yuzu’s eyes were bright with unshed tears, which Ichigo politely pretended not to notice.

Karin clenched her fist, punching him gently in the shoulder. “Give the bad guy a good thrashing, Ichi-nii!”

Ichigo ruffled her hair, and then kissed each of them on the forehead, tucking them both in.

The girls were _so_ adorable sometimes.

* * *

Renji didn’t have a reason to doubt Urahara’s words.

Those fluid movements, the way he handed the tea service without looking down… minor noble family, maybe? Kira would probably know better than him. The second son of some noble family, stationed in the jūreichi as a sign of favour, even provided with a captain-class escort. One could never tell what the state of such a spiritual particle-dense region would be.

His mind kept shying from considering those spiritually-aware children.

No one in their right _mind_ would –

Well, most shinigami were a bit touched in head, Renji supposed.

Urahara glanced down at his denreishinki as it beeped with a message, some model Renji didn’t recognise. The screen was bigger than anything he was used to, and it could even display full paragraphs.

“Ichigo’s just found the certificate, he’ll be bringing it here shortly.”

Renji nodded stiffly. He had to get this to Soul Society as soon as possible – it was entirely possible that Kuchiki-taichō might not have turned in yet, and if so he could give his captain a heads-up before the inquisitor from Central Forty-Six turned up in the morning.

A witness would help, too.

“You can take Ichigo with you,” Urahara interrupted, just as Renji was about to open his mouth to ask.

He closed his mouth again, sheepishly. Was it that obvious?

Urahara sipped at his tea with the sort of serenity Renji had only ever seen from Unohana-taichō before.

The shōji doors to the tea room slid open to reveal – Kurosaki, Renji remembered. Kurosaki Ichigo, brandishing a piece of paper like a weapon.

With a glance at Urahara, Renji took the certificate in hand.

Heavy embossed paper, he could tell with a single touch. Indented wax seal, and what was undeniably the Sōtaichō’s signature.

This was real, all right.

“I need a Senkaimon,” he told the pair, carefully setting the certificate down on top of the haphazard pile that was Rukia’s stuff.

Urahara nodded, producing some kind of… rectangular bag with wheels? out of seemingly nowhere. “Here, you can pack away Kuchiki-san’s things. We’ll go downstairs to set up the Senkaimon first.”

It didn’t take Renji all that long to put Rukia’s things away. He figured that if she was around to yell at him for crumpling her clothes, he’d take it.

‘Downstairs’… there was a trapdoor propped conveniently open, and a ladder leading downwards. Renji climbed down obediently, clutching the precious certificate in one hand, and then had to whistle in appreciation at the cavernous room he suddenly found himself in.

Definitely a noble family, if Urahara was rich enough to afford something like this. It must’ve have taken at least _three_ Kidō Masters to build a training room of this size.

There was the tell-tale glow of a Senkaimon in the distance, and Renji hurried towards it, slipping easily into shunpo to cover the distance easier.

His footsteps slowed, and then stopped.

Kurosaki and Urahara were – kissing?

Renji stared.

He was no stranger to physical intimacy, but this – this made a blush rise on his cheeks.

Kurosaki had his arms around Urahara, and they weren’t grinding or anything, nothing like what Renji had seen a hundred times before in dark alleys, but something a thousand times more intimate.

Maybe it was the way Urahara had a hand cupping the base of Kurosaki’s head, thumb resting against the hollow of his neck. Maybe it was the soft wet sounds of their mouths sliding against each other, languid and unhurried.

He couldn’t tear his gaze away.

Urahara finally pulled away, breaking the kiss, but he didn’t let go of Kurosaki just yet.

“I need to go,” Kurosaki finally said, after another long moment. His tone was regretful. “Before I tell Renji to wait another hour and drag you upstairs for a bit.”

Urahara cracked a grin at that, dropping his arms from around Kurosaki’s neck. “I do believe Abarai-fukutaichō is already waiting for you,” he pointed out.

Renji managed to suppress a squeak when the two of them turned to face him, Kurosaki nonchalantly swiping the back of his hand over his mouth, like… yeah, no, Renji was not going to think about that.

He hefted the weird wheeled-bag awkwardly. “Uh, yeah. Ready to go whenever.”

For some reason, that made Urahara’s grin widen. That paper fan made another appearance, tapping against its owner’s lips. “Then perhaps you should summon your jigoku-chō,” he pointed out drily. “We _would_ like to avoid an encounter with the Kōtotsu in the Dangai, if you would please.”

Right. Renji fought the urge to blush again, fumbling for Zabimaru.

The black butterfly fluttered into existence, passing through the shimmering doorway.

Renji took a deep breath and dove through.

* * *

Kisuke watched the Senkaimon doors slide shut behind them before the smile slid off his face.

 _Don’t die_ , he wanted to say.

He didn’t, because he knew Ichigo couldn’t promise that.

 _Call me every night_ , though. That, they could do.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I am Byakuya of the Kuchiki. Known as Balance-Seeker, wielder of Senbonzakura, keeper of the sacred records. I am the son of Sōjun, son of Ginrei, the first of one, first of six, and the twenty-eighth head of the Kuchiki. And I ask you, familiar stranger – who are you?”

When Karin opened her eyes, she was honestly surprised that she’d slept at all. She shook her sister awake, and they dressed in sombre silence, dragging their school bags downstairs.

Even _knowing_ that Ichi-nii was gone, he’d told them as much himself, didn’t really prepare them for the sight of Kisuke-san sitting alone at the dining table, legs crossed neatly under himself and reading the morning newspaper.

Beside her, Yuzu gave a soft, choked sob.

The newspaper lowered slightly. Karin had no doubt Kisuke-san knew they were there, but the man didn’t say anything. It didn’t signify a lack of interest in them, Karin reminded herself. Kisuke-san just didn’t know what to do, not like Tessai-san and Ichi-nii did.

 _You can go to him for anything_ , Ichi-nii’s voice sounded in her head.

Karin pushed Yuzu forwards, hard enough that she tripped forwards with a startled cry. Kisuke-san caught her instinctively, his eyes wide and surprised, like a deer caught in headlights.

Yeah, she could see what Ichi-nii meant, all right. Karin marched forwards, grabbing one of his arms and draping it around Yuzu’s shoulders, nudging Yuzu until her sister curled up against his side. That done, she came around the table and tucked herself into Kisuke-san’s other side, feeling his other arm come up around her own shoulders.

Karin exhaled, slowly. Kisuke-san didn’t precisely feel the same way Ichi-nii would, but there was an undeniable sense of _familiarity_ , probably because they use the same body wash or something. Or maybe it had something to do with reiatsu; although she didn’t know much about reiatsu, she did live in a house with three adult shinigami.

“Is Ichi-nii okay?”

Kisuke-san flicked a quick look at her. “Yes,” he told them immediately. “He’s arrived safely in Soul Society last night, and he’s probably busy kicking ass and taking names right now.”

Yuzu was startled into a soft giggle.

Karin wasn’t so easily placated. “Are you just saying that to make us feel better?” she demanded.

Kisuke-san blinked, like the idea hadn’t even occurred to him.

“No, no,” he reassured, and let go of her to put his phone on the table, where they could both lean in to see the messages.

> _From: Ichigo, 03:32_
> 
> _Subject: Arrived_
> 
> _Message: Place still looks the same._

Yuzu burst out laughing.

> _From: Ichigo, 03:58_
> 
> _Subject: Re: Arrived_
> 
> _Message: At the Sixth’s. Renji’s gone to talk to Byakuya, I’m looking for Rukia._

 

> _From: Ichigo, 03:58_
> 
> _Subject: Re: Re: Arrived_
> 
> _Message: Found her. She’s sleeping in one of the cells._

 

> _From: Ichigo, 04:24_
> 
> _Subject: Re: Re: Re: Arrived_
> 
> _Message: Bunking with Renji tonight. C46’s coming at 7._

 

> _From: Kisuke, 04:25_
> 
> _Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Arrived_
> 
> _Message: Sleep well._

Karin glanced at the wall clock. It was half past seven, which meant that this C46, whatever that meant, should already be there.

Even as she watched, Kisuke-san’s phone lit up with a new incoming message.

> _From: Ichigo, 07:36_
> 
> _Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Arrived_
> 
> _Message: How are the girls?_

Karin stretched out her hands for the phone instinctively, and only belatedly realised that she should probably check with Kisuke-san first.

“Go ahead.” He nodded.

She snatched up the phone.

 _Hey, Ichi-nii_ , she typed, fingers a little clumsy but finding the keys easily enough. _It’s Karin. Yuzu and I are fine, just waiting for you to come home._

She hesitated over the buttons, but then finally added one last line. _Kick their asses, Ichi-nii!_

“Anything you want to add, Yuzu?”

Her twin checked her message, and then shook her head. “I wish I could tell him to stay safe, but then he wouldn’t be Ichi-nii,” Yuzu said, somewhat sadly.

Karin snorted out a laugh, and then clicked Send.

The phone didn’t chime with a response immediately, so Ichi-nii was probably busy with that C46 whoever.

“Come on,” she told Yuzu, shoving a piece of toast into her mouth. “We don’t want to be late to school.”

* * *

His phone buzzed in his pocket, but Ichigo didn’t have the time to check it. The girls would be all right, anyway. Kisuke wouldn’t let anything happen to them.

Rukia, on the other hand…

“What do you mean, execution?” he demanded. Even _knowing_ that the exact same thing happened the _last_ time around didn’t stop the incredulity bubbling up in his chest. “She hasn’t even had a trial yet – and anyway, doesn’t that certificate prove that you’ve gotten her locked up on false charges?”

He even _asked_ Kisuke, while they were alone in the basement; Kisuke had assured him that that certificate was real.

Well, Kisuke could’ve lied to him, knowing that Ichigo couldn’t act for his life, but never mind that.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Renji openly gaping at him, and Byakuya’s stony-faced presence in the hallway beyond.

The woman gazed back at him, unruffled. “It is not for the likes of you to question the wisdom of Central Forty-Six, child. This is their will, and thus it will be done. Now, step aside.”

Not this bullshit again. If there was _one_ thing Ichigo didn’t like about coming back in time, it was that he was going to have to beat some sense into these idiots _all. Over. Again._

“No.”

For the first time, the High Inquisitor paused. “No?” she repeated. Ichigo had the feeling she didn’t hear that word very often.

“ _No_ ,” he stressed, folding his arms over his chest. “Do you even hear yourself? You’re going to execute some innocent person with no reason other than ‘you feel like it’? And you expect me to step aside and _let_ you?”

A brief frown creased the woman’s forehead. “Child, I do not know who you think you are –”

“Did you ask?” interrupted Ichigo. “You didn’t even ask me who I am, you just marched in here and started ordering me around –”

“Your name hardly matters –”

“How would you know that _before_ you ask –”

“I will ask.”

The inquisitor flicked Byakuya an annoyed look. Ichigo was honestly surprised that Byakuya didn’t incinerate her on the spot for her rudeness. “Kuchiki-sama, surely you do not mean to indulge this foolishness!”

Byakuya gazed back at her implacably. “And yet, your own attempts have yielded nothing but futility. If this is indeed as insignificant a matter as you have deemed thus, a simple question will suffice.” He turned to Ichigo, completely dismissing her splutters of outrage. “I am Byakuya of the Kuchiki,” he introduced, his Name ringing with the force of his reiatsu. “Known as Balance-Seeker, wielder of Senbonzakura, keeper of the sacred records. I am the son of Sōjun, son of Ginrei, the first of one, first of six, and the twenty-eighth head of the Kuchiki. And I ask you, familiar stranger – who are you?”

Ichigo blew out a long breath.

He knew how to respond, of course; that wasn’t the problem. He just wished it didn’t have to be like this.

“I am Ichigo of the Shiba,” he bit out, staring straight at Byakuya, pretending he couldn’t hear the little choked-off gasp coming from the cell behind him. “Known as Kurosaki, wielder of Zangetsu, guardian of the Getsuga. Son of Isshin, son of Ichiryū, the first of three, fourth of twenty-two, and the Protector of the Inner Sanctum.”

Byakuya’s facial expression never changed, but he did spend another long moment just _looking_ at Ichigo before transferring his glacial stare back to the inquisitor.

“Preposterous,” the woman finally found her voice. “Shiba Isshin was killed in action twenty years ago, the line of the Inner Sanctum is no more!”

“That’s stupid,” Ichigo retorted. “Why would I even lie about something so easily proven – all I’ll have to do is pull out my Getsuga Tenshō, but then Byakuya might kill me for destroying his division.”

“A character witness should suffice,” agreed Byakuya, almost drolly.

Ichigo couldn’t tell if it was a dare, or whether Byakuya was trying to give him an opening, and frankly, he didn’t care. He’d come prepared for all the possibilities. “Sure, you can just call Yūshirō – ah, I mean, Sakimune-kakka.” Yūshirō would back him up. All Ichigo needed to do was to drop Kisuke’s name, and Yūshirō would swear the sky was green and made of cheese if he was asked to.

Well, Ichigo never pretended to know or care very much about the inner workings of Soul Society’s nobility, and any gaps in his knowledge could be attributed to the fact that his father died long before he could prepare Ichigo for his inheritance.

“I cannot possibly summon the head of the Shihōin for something so banal –”

This was just absurd. “Who else did you expect me to know, if not someone from the Great Noble Houses?” he challenged. “I guess, if you didn’t want to call Yūshirō, you could call for his older sister, or the head of the Shiba, or Matsumoto-fukutaichō from the Tenth, or really, anything but stand here blustering at me about how impossible everything is.”

It _would_ be amusing to see them attempt to start a man-hunt for Yoruichi-san if nothing else, even though Ichigo could’ve told them exactly where she was: probably lazing around Kūkaku-nee-chan’s house.

The inquisitor was turning an interesting purple that would’ve been _funny_ if Ichigo wasn’t so irritated.

“I should arrest you for obstruction of justice,” she snarled.

“You could _try_.” Ichigo leaned against the door of the cell. “But unless there’s a new law I don’t know about, a Royal Guard doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of your precious Central, so I’m not obliged to go anywhere.”

Talking to her was like beating his head against a wall. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, thumbing it open, and couldn’t suppress his smile at the response he got. It seemed like Kisuke had been showing his sisters the messages.

“Who are you talking to?”

“My sisters. You know, _Shiba Isshin’s_ daughters. In case you forgot what ‘first of three’ means.”

Yoruichi-san had spent _so_ long forcing the lines down Ichigo’s throat, in a future that would now never come to pass, he could probably have recited them in his sleep. Although Ichigo was starting to regret doing things this way; maybe he should have come to Soul Society as a ryoka after all, it would probably have been easier.

Still. He wasn’t one to doubt the efficacy of Kisuke’s plans.

_“You need to make allies, and fast. Aizen might accelerate the timetable this time around.” Kisuke straightened Ichigo’s shitagi, stepping away to pick up Zangetsu’s sheath while Ichigo finished dressing himself. “Turn up as the head of the long-lost Inner Sanctum, you’ll get people to stop and listen instead of attacking you on sight.”_

The Five Great Noble Houses were once the guards of the Soul King, each assigned to a unique task. The Shihōin, guardians of the sacred armaments. The Kuchiki, keepers of historical records. The Shiba, wardens of the royal gates. And of the Shiba, the branch of the Inner Sanctum was specifically in charge of the throne room, gifted with the power of Getsuga, that which could cleave the heavens asunder with a single strike.

Ichigo had never known why Goat-Face had the same shikai ability as he did, until Yoruichi-san’s explanation.

Even Kisuke’s planning couldn’t have accounted for this idiot from Central, though.

“Oh, just go away and come back when you have something useful to say,” he finally had to interrupt her again. Her blathering was starting to hurt his ears.

Watching the inquisitor flounce out of the prison in a huff, Ichigo exhaled and leaned back against the wall. The urge to continue his disparaging remarks was on the tip of his tongue, but he held it in. This wasn’t his Renji, wasn’t his Rukia, wasn’t his _Byakuya_. He couldn’t treat them like they were.

 _It’s harder than I thought it would be_ , Ichigo typed on his phone, out of no real reason other than a _need_ to talk to someone who’d understand.

He didn’t know how he’d have done this, without Kisuke behind him every step of the way.

“You are the son of Shiba Isshin?”

Ichigo shoved his phone into his pocket, meeting Byakuya’s eyes squarely. “I am,” he confirmed. Had Byakuya known his old man? Well, he supposed they must be at least acquainted, since they were both from Great Noble Houses and whatever, but Byakuya had never acted like he knew Isshin from… before. Why the sudden interest?

“Shiba-taichō disappeared on a mission to the Human World about twenty years ago,” Byakuya continue, and suddenly Ichigo understood.

This wasn’t Byakuya asking after a friend he once knew, this was a _test_.

“Yeah, he went to Naruki City to investigate reports of some strange Hollow.” He knew the story, although not from Goat-Face himself. It was Tōshirō who’d told him, Hyōrinmaru dangling from his exhausted grip, slumped against the wall of their latest safehouse. “Except it was a trap, and he was so badly injured that he almost didn’t make it.”

“A… trap,” Byakuya repeated, slowly. “An assassination attempt?”

Ichigo nodded, and didn’t disabuse him of the notion. For someone who coveted the Soul King’s throne, who better to assassinate than the head of the Royal Guard? “If it wasn’t for my mother passing by at the right time, it would’ve been successful.” He scowled at the far wall. “Not that it helped him the second time.”

Not quite the correct sequence of events, but it was easier than explaining his entire heritage and Aizen’s convoluted plots. Aizen _was_ behind their deaths; that was enough.

It was enough for Byakuya, evidently. “I am sorry for your loss,” he said formally, and even dipped his head.

Well, that had to be a first, in any timeline.

“I carry the name ‘Kurosaki’ in honour of my mother,” he revealed. There. Let Byakuya make of it what he will. Ichigo had to bite his tongue before he mentioned Byakuya’s own parents, or heavens forbid, _Hisana_.

Being back in the past and trying to forget everything he knew about all these people was _confusing_.

Byakuya inclined his head in a grave nod.

The matter resolved, Ichigo pulled out his phone again, trying to pretend he can’t sense the awkward silence.

_You are Kurosaki Ichigo, the sun will cease to rise before you learn the meaning of ‘give up’._

Ichigo snapped his phone shut again, willing the tips of his ears to stop burning.

“What are your intentions towards Rukia?”

His head snapped up, and Ichigo gaped at Byakuya.

“Nii-sama!” Rukia yelped. The bars to the cell rattled with the force of her embarrassment; she must’ve grabbed them. “Kurosaki bears no ignoble intentions towards me –”

“I’m a happy relationship with another man,” interjected Ichigo, just a little drily. He’d certainly never gotten _that_ question from Byakuya before, and that was the time Rukia had actually spent an entire month sleeping in his closet. “Rukia’s around the same age as our oldest kids, and she was residing under our roof when she was taken for questioning, that’s all.” He never looked back at her, not wanting to see the look on her face when she came to the same realisation that Kisuke had. “And if the crime is ‘associating with criminals’, how soon before Central comes for _them_?”

“Central does not normally interfere in the affairs of humans,” began Byakuya, although his tone was more placating than assertive. Weirdly enough, Ichigo could almost think he was trying to be _reassuring_.

“I don’t think any of them are normal humans.” Surprisingly, it was Renji who piped up, before Ichigo could figure out what Byakuya was driving at. He quailed a little at being the centre of attention, but forged on valiantly. “I mean, they could definitely see me, but they felt like Academy students at best.”

Easy targets for the Onmitsukidō, he didn’t have to add.

Ichigo pressed his lips together.

“Shouldn’t you go back, then?” Ichigo risked a glance backwards, to see that Rukia’s knuckles were white where they clutched at the bars. She was at least several shades paler than her usual self, almost like she’d activated bankai. “If more assassins do come for Karin and Yuzu…”

Ah.

He supposed that was a reasonable thought to have, that someone who had killed his parents might be seeking to finish the job, before the girls grew up and came into their own powers.

Still, the thought of Sui-Fèng trying to fight Kisuke had Ichigo snorting. “My husband can take them blindfolded with a hand tied behind his back,” he said conversationally. Maybe not the Kisuke of this timeline, but _his_ Kisuke? He’d carve through half the Gotei captains like butter.

He didn’t think much of it until three voices echoed the same phrase in three different intonations.

“Huh?” He didn’t think Soul Society had anything against homosexuality, given Ukitake and Kyōraku, and the fact that procreation wasn’t the usual means of starting a family.

“Your _husband_?” Rukia repeated. Ichigo squinted. Were those _sparkles_ in her eyes? “Oh, I hadn’t realised you were married, I was under the assumption that you were just cohabiting… with eight adopted children… right.” She shook her head, a weird blush on her face. “Don’t mind me,” she said hurried.

“Your husband,” echoed Renji. “Then what was wrong with me calling you Urahara Ichigo?”

Ichigo could feel the heat threatening to creep up his face, the familiar swoop of weightlessness in his belly every time he heard that moniker. “Nothing,” he admitted. “Just, easier to address us if we kept separate names, yeah?”

“ _Urahara_?” Byakuya’s tone was sharp, but Ichigo couldn’t parse the emotion from it.

“You know him, nii-sama?”

Byakuya visibly hesitated.

Ichigo coughed to hide his grin. “I’m in love, not blind; go ahead and describe him the way you want to.”

“So the accusations against Rukia are true.” Byakuya’s blank mask slid back onto his face and he turned away; Ichigo could see that his decision was already made.

“Hey Byakuya,” he called out, before Byakuya could get out of hearing distance. “Just a quick thought exercise: if you were aiming for the Soul King’s throne, you’d want to destabilise your opponents first, right? Can you think of a better way to do so than to incapacitate half the Gotei and blame it on one of the captains?”

There was the slightest hesitation in Byakuya’s footsteps as he left.

Ichigo shook his head. Maybe he should have just beaten it into Byakuya’s head instead of trying to _talk_ it out.

* * *

Kisuke picked up on the first ring.

“Hey.” Ichigo swallowed against the lump in his throat. “How’s everyone doing?”

“Good.” Kisuke’s voice was warm and rich, and not for the first time Ichigo was thankful for the fact that Kisuke had upgraded their denreishinki to the quality expected of human phones. “Just missing you.”

“Oh.” Ichigo swallowed again. “Even you?”

The soft huff of Kisuke’s laughter was possibly the best thing Ichigo had heard all day, and definitely what he needed after an entire day of dealing with these bastards who thought they could walk all over him.

“Of course I miss you,” Kisuke said warmly.

“I wish you were here with me,” Ichigo admitted. “I can’t talk my way out of a paper bag; I never know what to say.”

“Sometimes you just need to tear the paper,” Kisuke advised after a moment of silence, and that startled a laugh out of Ichigo.

“I thought you said I shouldn’t go around fighting people.”

“I said you should introduce yourself as Shiba Ichigo, and only fight the ones who don’t listen,” Kisuke corrected. “I know better than to stand in the way of a such a tried-and-proven method of communication.”

Ichigo laughed again, feeling his cheeks stretch with the effort.

He looked up when footsteps sounded in the corridor, but it was just Renji.

“I brought dinner,” Renji said, holding up three bags of food. His eyes went to the phone Ichigo was holding. “Is that Urahara?”

“Yeah,” Ichigo confirmed, and didn’t explain himself.

Renji didn’t say anything else, just handed one of the bags to Ichigo and passed another through the bars to Rukia. He sat down opposite Ichigo, pulling out his own food.

“Hey, Renji?”

“Mm?”

“I don’t think I should go back to your place tonight.” Ichigo glanced back at Rukia. “Some guys from the Ninth just came by earlier, tried to take her to some… tower place.”

“Penitence Tower,” supplied Rukia quietly, setting down her chopsticks. “It’s where criminals are held before their execution.”

Ichigo scowled, stabbing at his rice. “Yeah, so I don’t want them pulling this sort of bullshit in the middle of the night. I’m staying.”

“I’ll stay with you.” There was a stubborn glint in Renji’s eye, one that meant it was going to be impossible to dissuade him. Ichigo knew better than to try. “I’ll haul two futons up, we can camp here.”

“Won’t nii-sama be notified when the guards make their rounds?” Rukia asked worried. “Renji, don’t risk your position for this, you’ve worked so hard to become a lieutenant!”

“Taichō already knows I’m bringing you two food.” Renji shrugged, like none of it mattered to him. “And what are you talking about anyway, you damned Rabbit? I only worked forty years for this, but we’ve been best friends for over a century – how can you think this can even compare?”

Ichigo grinned down into his dinner. He glanced down at his phone, knowing that Kisuke wouldn’t have hung up – would never hang up on him. He didn’t know how or what prompted Renji and Rukia to reconcile far earlier this time around, but he was so very glad that they did.

* * *

Now that school was out for the summer, the Shōten was bustling with activity even during the day.

The kids did prefer to go out, though.

Keigo and Mizuiro had dropped by again to take Chad to the arcade, though Kisuke had no idea why they sought his permission first, of all things – or why Chad was standing to one side like this was something perfectly normal.

Meanwhile, the girls – meaning Tatsuki and Orihime, together with Karin and Yuzu – were going to try that confectionery shop that Kisuke had taken Ichigo to. Apparently someone had been telling his sister stories. Tessai was going along, ostensibly to see if he could replicate the recipe at home, but Kisuke knew it was to keep an eye on the twins just in case Aizen decided a hostage or two would be useful.

He passed by Uryū, who was busy pummelling several boulders in the basement into submission, and went into his lab.

Ichigo was stirring up a storm in Soul Society, according to all his sources. Any day now, Yoruichi was probably going to show up at the shop and demand to know what was going on.

Half the non-traitorous captains and most of the lieutenants were on Ichigo’s side, just as Kisuke had predicted. Of the remainder, Sui-Fèng would be impossible to convince, Kurotsuchi didn’t care beyond Ichigo’s potential as an experiment, and Komamura would stay neutral as long as the Sōtaichō kept silent on the matter.

That only left…

Ichigo picked up on the third ring. “Sorry, I’m a little bit busy right now.” He sounded just the slightest bit breathless.

Kisuke couldn’t help but grin. “Why, Ichigo-san,” he leered. “In the middle of the day?”

“Huh?” It took a moment before Ichigo _got it_. “Kisuke!”

The sound of swords clashing in the background made it obvious what Ichigo was actually up to, though, and Kisuke had to abandon the teasing. “Everything going well?” he inquired.

“Yep,” Ichigo agreed. “Just need to pound some sense into these idiots, you know how it is.”

Through the phone, Kisuke can hear someone squawking in outrage. Hitsugaya, just as he expected. There was no way the Tenth Division captain would capitulate until Ichigo could prove to him that Shiba Isshin hadn’t deliberately _chosen_ to abandon his division, chosen to abandon Matsumoto.

“Shall I leave you to it, then?”

“I’ll call you back!” Ichigo shouted, barely audible over the sound of wind buffeting the microphone. Absently, Kisuke made a mental note to upgrade the microphone’s capabilities. Clearly he hadn’t taken the wind generated at shunpo-level speeds, _Ichigo-level_ speeds into account when he built them.

* * *

_Execution’s set for tomorrow morning._

Kisuke frowned down at the latest text message from Ichigo. That was odd… Ichigo had been sitting in front of Rukia’s cell door for the past three days, and Aizen hadn’t showed his face at all. Still, it had to be obvious by now that Kuchiki Rukia wasn’t carrying the Hōgyoku.

What was the point of ordering an execution regardless?

Kisuke didn’t know. He didn’t like the fact that he didn’t know.

His denreishinki chimed again.

 _Probably won’t be able to call tonight_.

Kisuke exhaled, looking down at the blinking screen. There was nothing _concrete_ he could say; Ichigo was just going to have to improvise.

 _Be careful_ , he texted back. No sense burdening Ichigo with the disquiets of an overactive mind. A generic warning was going to have to be enough; Ichigo would understand what he meant to say.

It would _have_ to be enough.

He fell asleep clutching his phone.

* * *

Kisuke awoke with a start.

The sun was shining through his bedroom window, which meant it was already past five.

He groped blindly for his phone, finding it fallen somewhere beside his pillow in the middle of the night.

No new messages.

The breakfast tasted like sand in his mouth. Karin and Yuzu took one look at him and didn’t badger him for updates about their brother, for which he was grateful.

Kisuke pulled Tessai aside when the kids had left the dining room.

“I’m going to pay the Visoreds a visit.”

Tessai gave a grave nod.

If nothing, Hiyori’s antics were guaranteed to take things off his mind.

The trip to Naruki City normally took an hour at a stroll, or forty minutes at a light jog.

Kisuke made it in thirty.

He didn’t even mean to slip into shunpo, but once he started it was difficult to get himself to stop, his surroundings blurring in a dizzying haze of too fast/not enough –

He almost overshot his destination.

That couldn’t be right; the warehouse was just sitting there in plain view, as though it wasn’t protected by some of the best wards a bakudō specialist could invent. Kisuke walked forwards cautiously, waiting for a slipper to the face.

His hand struck the warehouse door.

Before Kisuke could even _consider_ the ramifications of that, the door swung open, eerily silent. That made no sense; Shinji never bothered to oil the hinges, and there was absolutely no reason for him to suddenly change his habits.

It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior, and a far longer one to understand just what he was seeing.

The interior was in _chaos_. An entire bookcase was upended, Love and Lisa’s beloved manga volumes strewn all over the floor, stray pages lying scattered like lone petals. Their dining table – big enough to fit all of them, Kisuke remembered picking it out _with_ them – was cracked down the middle, as though something – or some _one_ had been violently thrown into it. The floor was splattered with blood.

There were no wards that he could sense.

Kisuke fumbled for his phone, nearly dropping it the moment he managed to get it out of his pocket, and dialled Ichigo’s number by heart.

His fingers were shaking.

Nobody picked up.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’d thought, at first, that Aizen had left them here to die.

Kisuke didn’t remember how he made it home, but he must’ve done so, for he found himself standing in the middle of his basement.

“Tenchō!” Tessai skidded to a halt behind him, voice coloured with rare concern. “Urahara-dono, what is the matter?”

It was a struggle to vocalise his thoughts, to peel out individual words from the hurricane whirling through his mind, a miasma of potential interpretations and half-formed plans. “The Visoreds are gone.”

Alarm spiked through Tessai’s reiatsu, making the air crackle with the faint tang of ozone, but Kisuke shook his head minutely. There was no way Tessai could accompany him, they both knew that, knew what the cost of casting two forbidden kidō in quick succession had been.

The Kidō Commander of old would’ve _wept_ to see the Tessai of nowadays struggling his way through Hadō 99: Kin, his casting speed so slow that even a half-Hollowfied human boy could evade it.

Tessai had paid the price for the lives of the Visoreds, and paid it gladly with no resentment in his heart, but he would never be able to fight at Kisuke’s side again.

“I need to go.”

His old friend’s gaze was sombre. “I’ll watch the shop.”

Kisuke didn’t watch Tessai step away, his own reiryoku bubbling under his skin, adrenaline hammering through his veins.

He couldn’t help but glance down at his phone once again.

 _Dialling_ , said the screen. The same message it had been showing for the past… who knew how long it had been since he left the warehouse?

Not _Connected_.

Not _This user is not available_ either.

Whatever Ichigo was doing, he couldn’t even spare a moment to press a button on his phone, to either accept or decline the call.

Kisuke had to go to him.

_Now._

His reiryoku surged like a wave, a gateway forming against the cliff with barely any conscious thought on his part, although –

A Garganta? Not a Senkaimon?

Ichigo was in _Hueco Mundo_?

Kisuke unsheathed Benihime and stepped through the portal.

* * *

He landed in the midst of utter _chaos_.

Sand crunched under his geta as he leapt aside almost immediately, the gaping maw of the Garganta vanishing, before the Hollow – no, the _Menos_ – could venture through.

Menos. Plural.

Even in Hueco Mundo, they were a rare sight; but here they were swarming like locusts.

“Kisuke!”

Reiatsu signatures were coming at him at top speed. _Not a threat_ , he identified after a moment, and put them out of his mind. There were more important things to focus his attention on.

Benihime shrieked in utter defiance, cleaving a Menos into half with the force of her cry, and a tiny black shape fell from its bisected jaws.

Kisuke turned away, already seeking out his next target.

Yoruichi would catch her.

“Oy, Kisuke, I’m talking to you!”

The nearest Menos was a good distance away, and looked to be well under control.

Only then did he look up, take in his surroundings, take note of the person who’d been trying to catch his attention for the past few minutes.

Rarely had he seen Hirako so visibly frazzled, but he was also staying a careful step away, jogging sideways to stay in Kisuke’s peripheral vision without having to come into physical contact with him. Kisuke was thankful for the consideration.

“Hirako-san,” he greeted, gaze flitting across the rest of the motley crew making their way over. All accounted for, although it seemed like less than half of them were mobile. “What brings you here?”

“You’re… kidding me, right?” Hirako pinched at the bridge of his nose as though in frustration, but no, it was just to summon his Pharaoh mask, to go after one of the Menos that was lumbering after Love and Lisa.

Kisuke sent a _Nake_ to help him out, and then another to harry at the Menos bearing down on Hachigen’s barriers, and –

Ichigo’s reiatsu blazed in the far distance, flaring like a black sunburst, and Kisuke couldn’t physically stop himself from looking over.

The next _Nake_ went a little off-centre, took off the Menos’ claw instead of its head, but Kisuke barely noticed. What was _He_ –

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Puzzle pieces spun through the air, falling into place one by one.

He began walking.

 _Ichigo_ , sang the blood in his veins, each thump of his heartbeat a brand upon his ribcage. _Ichigo._

There were two hundred and six Menos between them. His reiatsu coiled and unfurled.

Two hundred and five.

Two hundred and four.

“Switch!” He heard Ichigo’s cry over the din, had the barest fraction of a second to understand and prepare himself before there was the faintest tug behind his navel –

“Hold him!”

Benihime caught the enemy blade a moment before it would have torn open his shoulder, and it was an awkward angle, but he gritted his teeth and poured his reiatsu into the counter, forcing the sword away.

“General Urahara,” the Aizen of his nightmares purred out. “So you’ve come at last.”

He looked the way he always did, in that future that should’ve _ceased to exist_ , wrapped in a form-fitting white coat that flared out at the waist, Kyōka Suigetsu in one hand.

“Ichigo?” Kisuke yelled back. He didn’t know where Ichigo was, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Aizen. “Ichigo, how long do you need?”

The response came from directly behind him, a haori flapping against his legs, as though Ichigo had flashed behind him for a moment just to make sure Kisuke could hear his response loud and clear. “As long as you can give me.”

Before Kisuke could reply, Aizen was speaking again.

“Tell me – did you enjoy my little wedding gift?”

He could see Aizen’s mouth moving in the shape of more words, but either the megalomaniac was no longer speaking aloud or there was something wrong with Kisuke’s ears, the roar of static too loud to ignore.

He –

_It was –_

“– seem to be missing your Shadow-Cat.”

Aizen cocked his head slightly, as though puzzled.

“Or perhaps –” his lips stretched in a macabre imitation of a grin “– you need a reminder?”

Benihime’s shield sprang fully-formed before he was conscious of casting it, on pure instinct than anything else, following the train of Aizen’s thoughts rather than his movements.

In the distance, Yoruichi reared back instinctively, eyes comically wide.

Chikasumi no Tate _shattered_ in a single hit, spraying the air with crimson. Kisuke was only glad it had held out for that hit at all; Aizen had meant to _kill_.

Kisuke raised his sword again, and slashed a line through the sand between them.

He’d heard the request, _Ichigo’s_ request, loud and clear. If Ichigo didn’t want Aizen to take another step further, then, by the Throne of Heaven, it would be _over Kisuke’s dead body_.

* * *

She didn’t see it coming.

She, Shihōin Shunshin Yoruichi, did not see the attack coming. If it hadn’t been for Kisuke’s timely shield…

“Yoruichi-sama!”

Suì-Fēng came hurrying up to her, but she couldn’t even muster up a reassuring grin for her once-apprentice.

Yoruichi stayed in her crouch, eyes peeled for any hint of movement, refusing to acknowledge even to herself that perhaps, this time, it might be futile.

Around her, the Gotei lay in shambles. Just about everyone who’d been present at the execution – namely, the captain and lieutenant of every division, plus a couple additions from the Eleventh – was somewhere in the vicinity.

They’d thought, at first, that Aizen had left them here to die.

It would’ve been a successful plan: there was only so much even the Sōtaichō could do, faced with endless waves of Menos coming at them on all fronts, the younger captains and even Ukitake collapsing from the sheer strain of nonstop combat. He had cast a barrier around them, maintaining it with the sheer force of his fiery reiatsu, to give Unohana a chance to start healing the worst of the injuries.

And then Aizen had come back, had gone through the barrier like he hadn’t even realised it was there, the ones he had called _Espada_ dragging several very familiar bodies behind them. The Gotei had tried to regroup, tried to rally the little that remained of their troops, but the sea of Menos had surged again.

That was when Kisuke showed up.

No, not Kisuke.

The stranger wearing her best friend’s face.

* * *

Truth be told, when Jūshirō first told him that the man who was sitting in front of little Rukia-chan’s cell door to protest Central’s ruling was married to _Urahara Kisuke_ , Shunsui had laughed. He’d even swung by the Sixth to take a look personally, and indeed, there was no mistaking it: Shiba Ichigo was exactly who he claimed to be, from the cut of his jaw to the stubborn glint in his eyes. The casual demonstration of Getsuga Tenshō upon request had only confirmed it.

But… Urahara?

Shunsui couldn’t compute it.

How could the nervous young captain he remembered, stained up to the elbows with blood that could never be scrubbed clean, catch the eye of someone as fiercely loyal as Shiba Ichigo?

Perhaps he didn’t know? The Onmitsukidō were known to lie like their lives depended on it.

But no. Ichigo had also told Byakuya-kun that he knew what kind of person Urahara was like, with a sardonic little smile like he’d known exactly what he was talking about. And of course, he’d asked for the shadow-head of the Onmitsukidō by name.

Nobody called upon Sakimune-kakka.

 _Nobody_.

Shiba Ichigo, Shunsui had decided, was an enigma.

An enigma whom he was _very glad_ was on their side.

Shunsui was ashamed to admit, even just to himself, that his mind went _blank_ for a moment when sensei’s shield went down, splintering into a million pieces, and sensei had made this harsh, wounded noise Shunsui had never heard in his two millennia in the Gotei.

Not even Yhwach had –

Aizen didn’t even look like he’d _noticed_.

But someone else had noticed, all right. Ichigo had gone straight to Genryūsai-sensei while the rest of them were still reeling, had grabbed him and made it to Unohana before any of the Menos could take advantage of his weakened state.

And then he’d gone after Aizen without a single word, forcing the traitor away from the rest of them.

Those humanoid-Hollows under Aizen’s command hesitated, unsure of what to do with their prisoners, and several of those prisoners took the chance to strike, strange Hollow-like masks appearing on their faces as they cleaved through their captors.

Hirako Shinji looked like he was ready to kill, a small blond lump Shunsui vaguely remembered as the previous lieutenant of the Twelfth – under _Urahara_ – tucked under the arm that wasn’t holding his zanpakutō.

Shunsui did a quick headcount.

Eight.

Eight terribly-familiar faces he never thought he’d see again.

His Lisa-chan stood proud and determined beside Hirako, like she couldn’t feel the gashes over her legs, the way her uniform was shredded and stained with blood that could only be her own, and Shunsui had to blink furiously.

_Lisa-chan… you’ve grown so much stronger._

* * *

“Seriously,” Hiyori griped, dangling from his grip like a sack of rice, “you’d think that being that Kisuke’s bitch would’ve gotten you more up-to-date information.”

Shinji… had to agree with her on that one.

And he had to agree with Love’s first vocal reaction.

_What the HELL is going on?!_

Aizen just strolled through the front door of their warehouse like Hachi’s wards didn’t even exist, humanoid Hollows he called _Arrancar_ and _Espada_ – implying that they were the ten strongest, perhaps? Shinji hadn’t been to Spain for decades, his Spanish was getting really rusty – grabbing them all and dragging them through a Garganta into Hueco Mundo.

What was with all the Menos?

Seriously, was this a forest of Menos or something?

But there was no time to think, no time to do anything but _react_ , with Love and Rose unconscious on the sands behind them and Hiyori tucked under one arm, and threats coming at them in every direction.

By the time the immediate threats in their vicinity had all been neutralised, Shinji just wanted to lie down and sleep for a week, Aizen be damned. Whoever that was, who had pounced on Aizen almost the minute Shinji had been dragged into Hueco Mundo, was doing fine without anyone else’s intervention, anyway.

Which was, of course, when a new Garganta opened.

His grip on Sakanade tightened, but after a stunned moment, Shinji recognised that reiatsu signature.

Since when had Kisuke been able to open Gargantas?

Shinji took one look at his face, and swallowed back the million things he wanted to ask.

Kisuke… didn’t look like he was willing to entertain questions.

* * *

Yoruichi doubted anyone else was near enough to hear what Aizen and Kisuke were saying. Even she could barely hear them, and that was probably thanks to her feline form.

She hadn’t believed the rumours at first, when the new Shiba that had taken Seireitei by storm was purported to be married to _Kisuke_. Captains or not, shinigami had a propensity for gossip, and scandals usually made for better gossip than the truth.

She would’ve known if Kisuke had gotten himself married, she’d thought at the time.

But Aizen… this wasn’t the Aizen she knew. This wasn’t the Kisuke she knew either.

And yet, they clearly knew each other.

 _Wedding gift_ , Aizen had said, and Kisuke had gone as white as a sheet, his already-pale features a sickly shade that couldn’t be passed off as a response to a tasteless joke.

That was as good a confession as any.

Not for the first time in the past week, Yoruichi found herself wishing that she’d gone back to the shop more often, instead of lingering in Soul Society, yearning for a home she could never have again. Maybe she’d have noticed, maybe she’d have been able to meet Shiba Ichigo before –

_“Hello, Yoruichi-san. Kisuke’s told me a lot about you.”_

_When Shiba Ichigo smiled, his eyes held an accusation Yoruichi didn’t know how to respond to._

Benihime came down, slashing a deep groove in the sand between them, and its meaning was clear.

_This is as far as you go._

The Kisuke she’d known would never have done that, would have turned up at the last minute – well, to be fair, this one did too, but Yoruichi had the feeling it wasn’t deliberate on his part – and fired kidō at Aizen from afar.

He’d certainly never have stridden up to Aizen and issued an _ultimatum_ like that.

Aizen studied his face, and then took a single step forwards, over the line.

The next few moments happened far too fast for her to register any more than flashes of light, an explosion, and the clang of swords – thrice.

And then Aizen was again standing behind the line, zanpakutō raised, and they were back to staring at each other.

Yoruichi blinked away the afterimages.

She’d known Kisuke was developing a new shikai technique for Aizen, one he had been planning to call _Hiasobi, Benihime, Juzutsunagi_ – something about a net of explosive beads. She hadn’t known he’d completed it, or that he’d managed to separate the beads from the mesh-net altogether, or that he’d found a way to put a delayed detonation on them.

Somehow, with that one move, Kisuke’d buried those beads into the sand, and set them to explode if Aizen stepped on them.

Yeah, that was Kisuke all right.

‘Impossible’ was just a relative term when it came to him.

Maybe _that_ was what attracted him to Shiba Ichigo? From the little she knew of the boy, the word ‘impossible’ didn’t seem to exist in his vocabulary either.

“You think a flimsy technique like this could possibly hold me?”

Kisuke didn’t dignify that taunt with an answer.

Aizen sighed and shook his head slowly, as though reprimanding a recalcitrant child. “It is obvious that you’re merely stalling for time, General Urahara, until your lover finishes clearing out the Menos.”

There it was, that term again. _General Urahara._ Once could have been a slip of the tongue, but twice? Several conclusions were forming in Yoruichi’s mind, and she didn’t like any of them.

“Therefore, I shall simply have to –”

Kisuke raised Benihime again, but he was a hair’s breadth too slow this time.

Blood splattered across the sands.

* * *

_He was going to lose._

If it was evident to Shunsui, it had to be evident to everyone else who was still remotely conscious, and to Urahara himself. He couldn’t help but admire the man’s tenacity, though. Even when forced onto the defensive, he never lost his focus, never hesitated.

Aizen shook his head, almost pityingly.

“You’ve grown soft and weak, Urahara Kisuke.”

They were so close that Shunsui could now hear their conversation. He gripped his twin blades tightly, rising slowly to his feet. If Aizen came any nearer…

“At this rate, you won’t last another five seconds, never mind fifty.”

Fifty more seconds? What was going to happen in fifty seconds?

Now that he thought about it… the Menos had been steadily decreasing in number, hadn’t they? Their barriers hadn’t been attacked for at least a full minute now.

Shunsui couldn’t help but take his eyes off the battle for a moment.

To their rear, Shiba Ichigo was a whirlwind of black robes, Getsugas scything through the air so fast Shunsui’s eyes couldn’t pick out individual movements, and the Menos were dropping like _flies_.

Ah.

Fifty more seconds, he estimated, and the area would be clear.

He looked back at Aizen again, just in time to see Urahara change his stance from Academy-standard kendō.

It was a _weird_ stance. Urahara’s left hand was stretched straight out, two fingers pointed forwards, his right hand holding his zanpakutō horizontally above his head. To Shunsui’s veteran eye, it was so full of holes that it seemed to have been developed by an amateur, but that couldn’t be right. Not when Aizen straightened up, looking like he was paying full attention for the first time since the Gotei became trapped in Hueco Mundo.

“Hoo, you are serious now, General Urahara.”

Urahara didn’t dignify that comment with a response, save to twitch the fingers of his left hand in the universal gesture for well-come-on.

Aizen smiled, and it wasn’t a pretty look, so unlike the gentle Sōsuke whom Shunsui had thought he’d known. “I look forward to seeing what little tricks you have come up with to defeat me this time.” Aizen spread his arms open, looking like he hadn’t a care in the world. “I’ll even give you a free shot.”

Anyone else – hell, Shunsui could hear Abarai-fukutaichō snarling several very uncomplimentary curses behind him – and they’d have responded.

Urahara simply stared back impassively at Aizen.

And then, without warning at all – without a single hand motion or chant, and Shunsui could’ve sworn he hadn’t blinked – twelve bright pink spears lanced through Aizen.

For the first time in the entire fight, Aizen spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground.

What – what just…

Aizen was still smiling faintly, despite the way his sleeve was smoking. “A level ninety-one kidō at full power with no hand signs or incantation?” he mused aloud, as though explaining to an invisible audience. “I wonder, Urahara Kisuke, just how long you can keep this up?”

Level ninety-one kidō – he couldn’t mean – Senjū Kōten Taihō?

But… everyone knew, a kidō with no incantation was reduced to one-third of its original power. Had Urahara somehow found a way to overcome _that_ limitation; something that the Kidō Corps, in two millennia, couldn’t resolve?

Also, didn’t it have ten flaming spears, not _twelve_?

Urahara cracked a bland smile, and Shunsui could tell immediately that it wasn’t genuine. “Well, Aizen-san, if the past ten years has taught this old dog any new tricks, it’s that you really can do anything if you’re dying for it.”

And then he sent another fifteen spears straight into Aizen’s chest.

* * *

“Perhaps you should do well to take a look at your own back, Urahara Kisuke.”

Shinji could scream himself hoarse, like Yoruichi and even Hiyori were doing, but he had the sinking feeling Kisuke couldn’t hear any of them right now.

Battle Frenzy, they used to call it. A technique of intense concentration in combat developed by Unohana herself, back when she was still Unohana Yachiru, the First Kenpachi. Shinji had no doubt that was what was happening, what kept Kisuke firing high-level kidō after kidō, far beyond what Shinji had _known_ his limits were, even taking into account mystical impossibilities like time travel.

The Huge Hollow advanced slowly upon Kisuke’s unprotected back, but it was too far for any of their techniques to reach, even Hachi’s.

And still, despite the taunt from Aizen, Kisuke didn’t turn around.

The Hollow reared back, the beginnings of a Cero forming in its mouth.

Despite _knowing_ it was pointless, a useless endeavour, a waste of his energy, Shinji found himself shouting anyway.

“Look out!”

* * *

The Hollow wavered on its feet, like it hadn’t quite realised yet that it had been bisected, and then collapsed.

Kisuke hadn’t looked back once.

* * *

Aizen took a single step backwards, and then another, and he should be fiercely _proud_ that he’d driven Aizen Sōsuke to all but retreat, driven him to one knee, but all Kisuke could think of was his last taunt playing on repeat.

_I’m sure I’ll have fun with him, when I’m done with you. The taste of his despair will be transcendent._

Benihime came slashing down –

– and suddenly it was Yoruichi-san kneeling in front of him, Yoruichi-san as he’d last seen her, dying but unbowed, eyes still blazing fiercely bright, and she said –

“Are you going to kill me again, Kisuke?”

– and he _missed_.

He had barely a fraction of a second to realise his mistake when the bomb hidden within the illusion went off, and it was far too late for him to lift his sword, too late to deflect or attempt a block, and all he could do was wait for the blast –

“GETSUGA JŪJISHŌ!”

A black blur landed in front of him, so close that his haori whipped into Kisuke’s face, and shielded Kisuke from the explosion with his own body.

Slowly, the dust settled.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shunsui wondered if he should be more wary, now that the pair was within striking range.
> 
> By all rights, he _should_ be. He’d just seen Urahara duel Aizen to a standstill; that same Aizen who had broken through Genryūsai-sensei’s barrier like he wasn’t there. And Shiba, who’d taken down several hundred Menos in less than ten minutes.
> 
> But he’d sat down with Shiba Ichigo, over the course of the past week; first over tea and then later over sake – and Shunsui could _read_ people. Ichigo was exactly as his name implied: a protector. And Shunsui had known Urahara, before the Hollowfication incident. Without the rage and grief of losing Lisa clouding his judgement, and with the evidence right here in front of him right now, Shunsui could honestly say that he completely believed that Urahara had been framed.

“Sorry I’m late,” Ichigo said.

Kisuke's lungs didn’t seem like they wanted to work. His legs didn’t either, but there was no way he could show that sort of vulnerability here, out in the open with the weight of so many unfriendly eyes boring into their backs.

Ichigo hadn’t moved from his protective position in front of Kisuke, far too close and yet not enough, which made it easy enough for Kisuke to tip his head just the slightest bit forwards, to rest it against the small of Ichigo’s back.

Just for a moment.

 _Breathe_ , he could almost imagine Ichigo saying.

Kisuke inhaled.

Exhaled.

“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly.

His hands barely shook as he sheathed Benihime, returning her to her usual sealed form, and then forced her to suffer the indignity of being used as a cane to prop himself up. Ichigo shifted slightly, his reiatsu patently tangible, like he knew Kisuke couldn’t handle having an arm around his shoulders right now.

Together, they turned to face the rest of the Gotei.

“I won’t miss the next time,” Kisuke vowed as they began walking, pretending not to notice the way Ichigo had deliberately slowed his pace so that Kisuke wouldn’t stumble.

The glance Ichigo sent him was unreadable.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

Ichigo couldn’t actually see Aizen’s illusions, Kisuke knew that, and yet –

“The look on your face,” Ichigo explained, and for a moment Kisuke wondered if he’d asked the question out loud. “And the way you changed the direction of your sword at the last minute. You wouldn’t have done that for just about anybody. It couldn’t have been me,” he added without a trace of arrogance, “even Aizen can’t subvert a soul bond. It wasn’t Tessai-san, because he would’ve known to stay put in the shop once you left, and you’d have known if the wards were breached.”

Which left only one possibility.

Ichigo would know, wouldn’t he? Kisuke had lost count of the number of times he’d woken up screaming Yoruichi’s name, pleading with her to change her mind, _begging_ her to let him figure out a way around it –

Ichigo would know, because he’d been the one to find Kisuke unconscious on the ground, the one to break the news that she was gone, the one to wrap his arms around Kisuke to physically stop him from going after her.

“Are you suggesting,” Ichigo’s tone became progressively drier, “that there is something in these three worlds that could change _Shihōin Yoruichi_ ’s mind once it’s set?”

Kisuke barked out a startled laugh.

* * *

They were coming nearer.

Yoruichi steeled herself to say something, anything, but then Kisuke turned his head to look straight at her, and the words froze in her throat.

There were two streaks of crimson down his cheeks, like tears of blood.

Ichigo frowned at her expression, looked back at Kisuke, and then said in the most delicate tone she’d heard him use so far, “Ah, you’ve got something on your face…”

And then he reached over to dab under Kisuke’s eyes with one finger, as casually as though he was just wiping away a smudge of dirt. And Kisuke… Kisuke just stood there and _let_ him touch him, like he hadn’t been touch-averse for almost as long as she’d known him.

If she had needed any more convincing that Kisuke had somehow, inexplicably, gotten married – this would’ve done it.

But she knew what those tears of blood meant.

* * *

Unohana had her hands full, Kisuke could tell in an instant, without needing to move any closer – not that Kyōraku would let him, he suspected, not when both Ukitake and Yamamoto were lying amongst the injured. Her own lieutenant was fluttering about right next to her, as was… Kira, he identified after a moment, pale blond hair nearly obscuring his full field of vision. The trio had erected the standard protective golden barrier meant to shield the wounded from any flying debris, or in this case, sand, but it wouldn’t hold up under any sort of reiatsu-charged attack.

It was easier to count who _wasn’t_ injured enough to require immediate medical attention. Kyōraku, of course, and Abarai, although the latter didn’t look like he could stand up. Suì-Fēng and Yoruichi, off to one side. Shinji and Lisa, guarding Hachi as he stood over a similar barrier, healing the Visoreds.

“How did you know to come?” Ichigo asked suddenly, as they drew close enough to the Gotei to talk without shouting. “I heard your call, but both my hands were full so I couldn’t pick up.”

“I had a bad feeling.” Now that he was saying the words out loud, they sounded like a bad joke, or a by-product of paranoia. “So I went to visit the Visoreds, but by the time I got there, Aizen had already taken them.”

* * *

Shunsui wondered if he should be more wary, now that the pair was within striking range.

By all rights, he _should_ be. He’d just seen Urahara duel Aizen to a standstill; that same Aizen who had broken through Genryūsai-sensei’s barrier like he wasn’t there. And Shiba, who’d taken down several _hundred_ Menos in less than ten minutes.

But he’d sat down with Shiba Ichigo, over the course of the past week; first over tea and then later over sake – and Shunsui could _read_ people. Ichigo was exactly as his name implied: a protector. And Shunsui had known Urahara, before the Hollowfication incident. Without the rage and grief of losing Lisa clouding his judgement, and with the evidence right here in front of him right now, Shunsui could honestly say that he completely believed that Urahara had been framed.

Besides, Lisa and Hirako were moving towards the pair, their respective zanpakutō sheathed, and if that wasn’t a sign that Urahara was innocent, Shunsui didn’t know what was.

“Really now,” Hirako said, hands shoved into his pockets. “Time travel? If it was anyone else, Kisuke, I’d have said it’s impossible.”

_What?_

* * *

Shinji waited.

After a moment, Ichigo strode forwards, half-blocking their view of Kisuke. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced in this timeline yet,” he greeted, dipping his head in a proper bow, low enough that Shinji’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m Kurosaki Ichigo, it’s good to see you again, Shinji.”

The depth of that bow meant… student to mentor?

Shinji could only think of one reason for him to be teaching anybody anything, after the exile.

“You’re one of _us_?”

Kurosaki flashed him a smile. “69 minutes, 38 seconds.”

Under his arm, Hiyori snarled something uncomplimentary.

Kurosaki simply gave her a nod, the smile turning into a little bit of a smirk. He didn’t seem to be put out at all – or confused – as to why she was calling him _Baldy_.

Shinji would be lying, if he said he didn’t _hope_ he was wrong about the time travel part, but he couldn’t say he was very surprised about being proven correct either.

“How long in the future?” Yoruichi demanded. Her fists clenched, and then loosened again; a sign of agitation she couldn’t quite hide. Shinji didn’t blame her for it.

Kurosaki’s lips thinned.

“Seven years.”

* * *

He was fifteen when the War started, Ichigo remembered, and twenty-two when they… lost.

Or maybe they’d lost a lot earlier, but they had simply refused to give up, were willing to die for what they’d believed in.

Except while _they_ were willing and able to die, Aizen wasn’t – on both accounts.

The War had lasted seven years, not because Aizen was so powerful that no one could kill him, but because he _never stayed dead_.

* * *

Time travel.

Shunsui turned the idea over in his mind.

Well, it was no more unbelievable than a zanpakutō whose mere _shikai_ could seize control of five senses, or Shiba Isshin having a son who was a self-taught captain-level prodigy.

Urahara looked exactly like how sensei did sometimes, leaning heavily on his shikomi-zue, his gaze distant. Shunsui had no trouble at all believing that he would’ve been one of the generals during a not-so-hypothetical war with Aizen.

He hadn’t thought he’d see another war so soon after the last one, but he was old enough to roll with the punches.

“How do we prepare for this war?”

* * *

“You don’t.”

But of course, they were never going to simply let something like that go, and Ichigo didn’t really expect them to.

“Shinji,” he interrupted, cutting through the protests. “The first time you used your shikai, Aizen overcame it in twenty seconds.”

Shinji fell silent.

“Also,” Kisuke finally came up next to him, where they could all see him now. “After fusing with the Hōgyoku, Aizen-san can’t be killed.”

Yeah, there was that too.

“We had a scoreboard.” Ichigo’s lips twitch in a sardonic grin. “Landing a lethal blow was worth a hundred points, making it back _alive_ after that twice as much.” He’d been leading the scores with three confirmed kills, and Renji and Rukia had laughed so much at him about it, until… well.

Until they couldn’t anymore.

Carving _Kuchiki Rukia – Kills: 1 – Status: Deceased_ into that damned rock might have been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, but Ichigo’d had to do it, because he didn’t want to see the expression on Renji’s face if _he_ had to do it.

“Yes, we’re sure about that. Even Aizen can’t survive having half his chest blown apart, or being bisected vertically. He just _resurrects_ after a few minutes, maybe an hour if we’re lucky.”

They didn’t have that rock anymore, but Ichigo could recite the embarrassingly-short list by heart.

 

> Ichimaru Gin – Kills: | – Status: Deceased
> 
> Yamamoto Genryūsai – Kills: | – Status: Deceased
> 
> Hitsugaya Tōshirō – Kills: | – Status: Alive
> 
> Kurosaki Ichigo – Kills: ||| – Status: Alive/Alive/Alive
> 
> Ishida Ryūken – Kills: | – Status: Alive
> 
> Abarai Renji – Kills: || – Status: Alive/Deceased
> 
> Hirako Shinji – Kills: | – Status: Deceased
> 
> Kuchiki Rukia – Kills: | – Status: Deceased
> 
> Matsumoto Rangiku – Kills: | – Status: Deceased
> 
> Kyōraku Shunsui – Kills: | – Status: Alive
> 
> Ukitake Jūshirō – Kills: | – Status: Deceased

 

But it was useless. Even if they didn’t die in the attempt, something _else_ eventually got them.

Unlike Aizen and his never-ending army of Hōgyoku-enhanced Arrancars, each of them a match for any seated officer, the shinigami couldn’t replenish their ranks that fast.

And all it took was one misstep, one stroke of bad luck, one piece of intel gone wrong.

“We spent a couple of years living in Hueco Mundo.” Ichigo shielded his eyes, casting a quick practised gaze around. “We’re in the Forest of Menos right now; Aizen must’ve hoped all those Menos would be enough to keep you all occupied.”

“There must be something we can do,” Kyōraku pressed. Ichigo appreciated the thought, but…

“You managed to kill Aizen once, together with Ukitake-taichō,” he revealed. “But he was prepared for your bankai the second time, and you died in the attempt.” Ichigo shook his head. “No, we’ll handle it. We know him better than any of you, and it doesn’t look like he’s had the chance to make any of his Arrancars yet –”

“There were the ones who ambushed us –” Shinji began.

Ichigo blinked. “Oh, those were naturally-formed Arrancar, that’s why they’re so weak.”

Kisuke coughed in something suspiciously resembling a laugh.

Ichigo glanced over at him, brows quirked quizzically, but _something_ else caught his attention. His eyes narrowed.

* * *

_Damn. He noticed –_

“You’re injured.”

Kisuke shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he tried to reassure, but he was unsurprised when Ichigo caught his wrist anyway. He looked away, already knowing what was coming next.

Ichigo turned the hand over, and then there was the slightest hesitation before he looked up at Kisuke. “Third degree kidō burns?”

Aware of all the gazes boring into him, some more accusatory than others, Kisuke snatched his hand away, hiding his palm from view. “Can’t feel it.”

Ichigo favoured him with a look of exasperation, which was _totally_ unwarranted and a fine example of the pot calling the kettle black. “Of course not, that’s what having third degree burns _usually_ means.” He shook his head. “You know, there’s a reason Aizen ripped your arm off last time. You don’t have to ruin your own arm and make it easier for him this time around.”

Kisuke remembered those days.

Remembered waking up in agony, his left shoulder a ruined stump, hastily cauterised by a _Shakkah_ _ō_ before he could bleed out. Inoue Orihime had been all the way on the other end of Hueco Mundo, and even Ichigo wouldn’t be able to get all the way to the camp she was in, extract her, and make it back safely. Not to mention, that would leave _that_ camp without a healer.

Remembered Ichigo tearing open a Garganta and flashing them back into the Transient World, right in front of his shop, nearly giving Tessai a heart attack.

_“Sorry, Tessai-san,” Ichigo had said, depositing Kisuke into his arms. “You’re the nearest healer I can get to.”_

Remembered sneaking down to the lab while Tessai was busy with Jinta and Ururu, only to realise his keyboard was configured for two hands. Remembered going back upstairs and lying down in his bedroom, his remaining arm over his eyes.

The next time Ichigo managed to eke out the time to visit, it was a month later and Kisuke was in the basement, trying to fine-tune his new prosthetic arm.

He also had to invent a new branch of kidō casting, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

“I’m flattered you think so highly of me, Ichigo, but I can’t afford to hold back against Aizen-san, and even I can’t cast kidō without an anchor.” The prosthetic had been perfect in that respect; unencumbered by the limitations of flesh, it could handle the full power of any kidō without burning out, as long as Kisuke used reinforced materials to build it.

And if it did burn out, well.

He’d built quite a few spares.

“And so, you used your _own_ hand as an anchor for multiple level nineties kidō?” Ichigo summarised, rolling his eyes. His gruff tone was at complete odds with the gentle way he was holding Kisuke’s arm. “What made you think _that_ was a good idea?”

“It worked,” Kisuke pointed out. “And nobody’s dead.”

He knew it was a low blow, and he was sorry the moment he said it, but the damage was already done. Ichigo’s lips thinned, and he turned his head away.

* * *

It was like the pair had completely forgotten that they still had an audience. It would’ve been entertaining, Shinji thought, if they hadn’t been discussing the apocalypse.

Maybe he should invite both of them out for drinks, after everything was over.

“Kisuke,” Kurosaki bit out, scowling at nothing in particular. “I want whatever strategy you thought up for the worst-case scenario possible when you first realised Aizen had come back in time with us.”

“He’s hiding somewhere raising another army. It’ll probably take him 72 hours or so,” replied Kisuke without hesitation.

They both blinked at that.

“He’s… not in Las Noches.” Kisuke shielded his eyes with one hand, head turned to look in a specific direction. Shinji could only hope he knew what he was doing, because all these sand dunes looked the same to _him_. “But where else would he be?”

Kurosaki shrugged, expressively. “Don’t look at me. You’re the brain, and I’m just the hired help. Literally, in fact. What are you paying me for again? It can’t be to sweep your floor, Ururu’s way better at it than I am.”

“To carry out safety inspections on the structural stability of my training grounds. Repeatedly. With much prejudice,” Kisuke retorted, without a trace of hesitation.

Kurosaki paused. “How in the world do you come up with these things?”

“I’m a certified genius.”

“Certified, I’ll give you that. Genius, I’m not so sure.” For emphasis, Kurosaki gripped the elbow of Kisuke’s injured arm, although Shinji noticed he was careful not to touch the hand itself.

Kisuke was practically rolling his eyes, tone dripping with the kind of frustration Shinji hadn’t heard from him in a century. “If I were capable of predicting Aizen Sōsuke, we would not be standing here having this conversation now.”

“Then don’t predict him. If you were a megalomaniac intent on destroying the world, where would you go now?”

“The Soul King’s Palace,” Kisuke replied promptly, and then frowned.

Kurosaki didn’t look fazed. “Okay, that’s where we’re headed then.”

“To the... Royal Realm?” Kisuke asked, a little blankly. “No shinigami alive today in the Gotei 13 knows where it is.”

“So?” Kurosaki looked nonplussed. “I bet you know two ways of getting in anyway.”

“Three,” Kisuke grudgingly admitted.

Shinji facepalmed.

Yoruichi burst out laughing.

* * *

Kisuke didn’t know what Ichigo would’ve said in response, because at that moment, his phone started ringing.

After a moment, so did Ichigo’s.

They exchanged a grim look. There weren’t a lot of people who had their numbers, and even fewer who’d be calling _both_ of them at the same time.

Ichigo dug out his phone and flipped it open, putting it on speaker mode. “Moshi moshi.”

“Shachō!” Tessai’s voice was loud, loud enough that Kisuke almost physically flinched away. “Where are – is Tenchō with you?”

“Yeah, Kisuke’s here.”

“We’ve got incoming,” Tessai reported, slipping into his commander mode. “Multiple Gargantas detected within radius, the radar’s completely flooded.”

“Is everyone safe?” Ichigo demanded, even as Kisuke went for his own phone.

“Tessai-san, fire up the wards.”

“Already done so,” Tessai confirmed. “Most of the children are at home, but Sado-san is out at the arcade with Asano-san and Kojima-san.”

Kisuke closed his eyes briefly. That was on the _other side_ of town –

“Uryū,” barked Ichigo, just that one word.

Uryū’s sigh was audible. “I’ll call Ryūken, but I’m not sure if he’ll respond.”

Right, of course. Karakura General Hospital was far nearer the arcade; in the same area, in fact, and covered by enough Quincy-made wards to stop a small Hollow invasion. Kisuke highly doubted that Aizen himself would be in this wave of attacks; most likely, it was an attempt to stop them from regrouping and coming up with a proper plan.

“Tell him it’s an order from me,” Ichigo was saying.

All the children must be crowded around the phone, awaiting their orders –

“Ururu, prep the lava cannon on the roof. Jinta, cover her until the wards go up. Orihime, if you can assist Tessai-san in maintaining the wards?”

A chorus of voices answered him.

“I’ll go up to the roof too,” Karin’s voice rose above the din. Kisuke could see Ichigo visibly bite back the instinctive urge to protest.

He laid a hand on Ichigo’s shoulder. The battle wards were designed to be one-way only, blocking any external attacks from penetrating while letting any attacks from inside through. Ichigo _knew_ that, but it was still going to be hard for him to see his own sister actively participating in a fight, especially at eleven years old.

“Yuzu,” he began.

“I – I’ll start cooking!” Yuzu’s voice was forcibly cheerful. “Everyone must be low on reiryoku after the fight, right? I’ll make sure there’s enough to eat!”

“Yeah,” Ichigo’s voice was suspiciously rough. “Your curry is the best, Yuzu.”

Kisuke squeezed his shoulder.

Ichigo allowed it for a moment, but then shook it off, ending the call. “We have to go,” he said needlessly

“Do you want us to –” Shinji began, and then cut himself off, glancing back at where Hachi was still working.

Ichigo glanced at Kisuke. “Actually, sure. We’ve got extra rooms, and it’s not like you can go to Soul Society with the rest of _them_. Yuzu would be ecstatic to have more people to feed.”

And wasn’t that the truth. Whether in the future or right now, Yuzu had always hated her relative powerlessness. Being tasked with a job as important as refuelling everyone’s reiryoku levels after a fight would help a long way with that.

“By the way Kisuke, tell me,” Ichigo was saying conversationally, ripping open two Gargantas – one back to Seireitei, for the Gotei. One to the shop, for them and the Visoreds – in quick succession. “Where _is_ the Hōgyoku?”

Kisuke’s eyes narrowed. Ichigo had never asked that question before…

“Over my dead body.”

Ichigo looked strangely satisfied by that. “Good,” he growled, punctuating that word with a terse nod. “Keep it that way.”

“No,” disagreed Hiyori, suddenly. “Amend _that_ to ‘over your best friend’s dead body’.”

Kisuke’s eyes slid over to her. “My best friend, as you put it, is already dead.” He held her gaze for a smidgen longer before dropping to the ground. “And I now know that she died for nothing.”

He threw himself into the Garganta before he could hear her response.

* * *

Tessai hadn’t been exaggerating. The sky was _covered_ with Gargantas, Hollows of all shapes and sizes descending upon Karakura Town in a swarm.

Kisuke shielded his eyes with his right hand.

“Hm,” he mused aloud. “I… don’t actually know how many Hollows that is, because I can’t count that fast.”

Ichigo had to snort at that. “‘ _A lot_ ’ would have been a valid answer, you know.”

There was a false grin playing about Kisuke’s lips, one that warned Ichigo not to push. “Scientific accuracy; old habits die hard.” His tone was light, but his eyes were as hard as steel as he raised Benihime.

“ _No_ ,” Ichigo said sharply. “Kisuke. Go back to the shop. You need to get that hand seen to.”

Kisuke looked back at him, and Ichigo knew he was about to argue.

He could…

“If you knock me out, I’ll never forgive you,” Kisuke snapped.

Ichigo’s eyes flashed, but he didn’t bother to pretend that _that_ hadn’t been what he was thinking of doing.

“You should have Hollowfied yourself,” he muttered, deliberately changing the subject. They didn’t have the _time_ to argue. “The high-speed regeneration is a serious boon.”

“Even if we had the time,” Kisuke pointed out, “I’d need the Hōgyoku to do it, and I don’t know where it is.”

“Ah yes, I forgot. Silly me.”

They were at an impasse, and they didn’t have the _time_ for this. Why couldn’t Kisuke see –

“Fine,” he relented, and continued before Kisuke’s eyes could widen in surprise at the apparent capitulation. “But there’s something else I need you to do.”

Kisuke waited, silent.

“I want you to figure out where Aizen’s hiding. I can handle these Hollows, you know I can – but this is something only you can do, and I’m counting on you to take care of it. You said it yourself, Aizen can’t come up with anything else for another 72 hours, that’s our chance right there.”

“72 hours?” Kisuke paused. “I’m not sure you understand, Ichigo –”

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Ichigo interrupted. “You’re right, 72 hours is such an unreasonable demand. You’ll be done in 48, won’t you?”

Kisuke opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

“You do what you can, and I’ll do what I can.” Ichigo said, too soft for any of the passing Visoreds to overhear. “ _Trust me_.”

Kisuke exhaled.

“I’ll tell Tessai to give our bedroom to the Visoreds. 48 hours, you said?”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He… he felt weirdly bereft, all of a sudden. He wanted to go over and lie down next to Ichigo and never get up. He wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. He wanted –

Turning his back on the Hollows might be one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

Kisuke walked into the shop, passing through the dining, and he was almost at the basement when Shinji caught his arm.

“Get Tessai to look at your hand first.” His tone brooked no argument.

Kisuke didn’t know what expression he was making, but Shinji looked faintly taken aback.

“I can _definitely_ believe you two are married. You look exactly like Kurosaki when you do that,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Go find Tessai.”

“Or what?” Kisuke challenged.

“Or I’ll tell your husband on you,” Shinji shot back.

Kisuke went.

* * *

Tessai was on the roof, seated in perfect jinzen, eyes half-closed. The wards didn’t need maintaining once they go up, they were designed that way, which meant he had to be monitoring them.

His eyes opened fully when Kisuke came into his line-of-sight. “Tenchō,” he greeted.

Just that one word, but it was already so full of disapproval that Kisuke’s shoulders slumped in defeat. This was why he was trying to avoid Tessai as long as possible. “Do you mind healing this, Tessai-san?” he asked, holding out his hand.

If looks were fire, Kisuke would probably have to upgrade that injury to a fourth degree kidō burn.

Tessai shook his head slowly, admonishingly. “Orihime-chan,” he called out in lieu of responding to Kisuke.

A head of bright orange hair popped up, bobbing vaguely on the other side of the roof. Kisuke didn’t see her at first, given the gigantic lava cannon taking up half the roof.

“Yes, Tessai-san?” she called back.

Kisuke leaned to the right, until he could see past the cannon. Karin was on that side too, he noted, her face scrunched up in concentration, a pistol crossbow in each hand. Sacrificing size for draw speed, exactly like how Masaki used to fight.

 _That_ was an unpleasant jolt of realisation.

The Karin he remembered had wielded a zanpakutō and a shikai, like her older brother. Kisuke wondered just how much of that was due to Isshin – likely respecting Masaki’s wishes – never telling their children of their Quincy heritage. How much more had been lost by this?

Time would tell, he supposed.

“Do you still remember how to do that healing technique I showed you the other day?”

Orihime hesitated visibly, dropping down cross-legged next to them. “I can... try?”

Tessai shook his head. “Orihime-san,” he told her gravely, with the kind of face he only ever made when he was in full teacher mode. Kisuke hadn’t seen it in over a century. “Remember: do or do not, there is no try.”

That was a very odd piece of advice. If one did not try, the rate of success would be zero, since no attempt was made in the first place.

He was about to say as much when Orihime perked up visibly, like Tessai had just reminded her of something important to her. An inside joke, perhaps, or a saying her brother used to like? Kisuke had tried, but dealing with children had never been his forte, and he’d been content to leave it all up to Tessai and Ichigo so far.

If he lived through this, he was going to change that bad habit.

If, if, if.

He was woolgathering.

“I understand, Tessai-san!” Orihime was saying, her expression fiercely earnest, so alike the Inoue-san Kisuke’d known that he had to blink away the afterimages. She took a deep breath, holding her palms out.

“Sōten Kisshun, I reject!”

A soft orange shield enveloped his hand up to the elbow, and it was like immersing his hand in a bucket of cold water.

Kisuke exhaled sharply, turning his face away.

“Does it hurt?” Orihime asked. Out of the corner of his eye, Kisuke could see her hands fluttering helplessly. “I’m so sorry, I haven’t really practised it much, just on injured alley cats and the other day Karin skinned her knee in a football game –”

“It’s okay,” Kisuke interrupted. “Thank you.”

Even as the words left his mouth he was wincing inwardly at how it came out, far too curt and abrupt, and he didn’t need the reproachful look from Tessai to know he’d inadvertently hurt her. “I’m sorry,” he added. He didn’t know how to explain it, how the sight of _that_ shield and _that_ look in her eyes reminded him of –

It didn’t matter. Orihime-chan wasn’t Inoue-san, would hopefully never _have_ to be Inoue-san, and Kisuke was fiercely _glad_ for that.

“It’s okay!” Orihime responded with false cheer. “I’ll just do my best!”

“That’s good enough,” Tessai told her gently, with another glare at Kisuke for good measure. Kisuke had no doubt Tessai would privately rip him a new one later.

Or get Ichigo to do it, yeah.

“I get it,” Orihime said sincerely. “It’s okay, Kisuke-san’s just worried about Ichigo-san!”

He’d have to make it up to her later.

Kisuke exhaled slowly, turning his gaze up to the sky.

It was as dark as midnight, streaks of black lightning scything through the swarming Hollows, carving large swathes through them. But with the battle wards up, they couldn’t feel any but the strongest reiatsu spikes, so it was like watching a moving picture screen above them.

A… movie, if he remembered right.

Ururu gave a grunt of effort, swinging the cannon around until it was nearly perpendicular to the ground, and let loose another blast that threatened to flatten Kisuke with a heatwave.

The heat stabilisers needed more work, he noted absently. Didn’t want the entire roof to turn into a desert every time they brought it out.

“JINTA _HOMERUN_!”

Kisuke shielded his eyes, squinting.

The winds from the cannon discharge didn’t seem to bother Jinta’s aim at all, or maybe he’d simply compensated with the sheer force of his reiatsu, compressing it into the tiny baseball not unlike the principle behind Ichigo’s bankai.

Several Hollows shrieked, collapsing into motes of dust. The baseball had gone through everything in a line, and the trajectory meant that it was falling back onto the roof, right where the kidō net was waiting to catch it. That wasn’t Jinta’s problem, though. The kidō net would catch it and bounce it into the basket of balls at his feet.

“That was my shot, damn it!”

Jinta pulled a face at Karin, sending another baseball flying.

She spat something unintelligible back at him, swinging her arm back around, her hands already glowing blue with concentrated reishi.

Jinta _howled_ in outrage as a hail of crossbow bolts pierced through the Hollows nearest to him.

“Ichi-nii!” Karin suddenly shouted, both pistol crossbows vanishing.

Kisuke looked up.

Ichigo stood above them, his black coat billowing in a wind Kisuke couldn’t feel.

In bankai already?

He shielded his eyes with one hand, scanning the horizon. The skies looked bluer than before, true, but multiple Gargantas still lay unchecked, a roiling mass oozing forth like a many-limbed swamp monster. Low-levelled Hollows, true, but in quantities large enough to be a nuisance nevertheless.

Ichigo stood, motionless.

Kisuke took out his phone, typing one-handed.

_Enjoying the view?_

Ichigo’s hand went into his pocket. He pulled out his phone, and then his shoulders shook with obvious laughter.

 _Not as much as you must be_ , he texted back.

He tipped his head back, trying to get a better view, but between the way Ichigo was standing and the way his bankai coat was billowing, he couldn’t see anything.

 _Maybe if you spread your legs more and take your coat off_ , he retorted.

This time, Ichigo bothered to lean down to give him a very exaggerated eye roll, one that involved his whole head.

_Maybe later._

“What’s he waiting for?”

Kisuke stiffened, and only the ingrained familiarity of the voice stopped him from blasting Shinji on reflex.

Shinji held up both hands placatingly. “We raided your linen cupboard; Yuzu-chan was very kind to find us enough futons to set up a triage station in your bedroom. Hope you still remember that kidō for cleaning bloodstains from tatami, you’re going to need it.”

Kisuke growled softly, and to his surprise Shinji backed off a step. “Hey, I’m just here to see if I can be of any help. I get that you can’t send any of the kids outside the wards, but I can go help Kurosaki.”

“Unnecessary,” Kisuke finally managed to bite out.

Shinji looked at him like he’d gone insane. “Kisuke, there’s at least a thousand Hollows out there!”

Whether a thousand or ten thousand, that wasn’t the problem. No, what was the real problem was –

“He can’t close all the Gargantas fast enough.”

Killing all the Hollows was the easy part; the hard part was doing it fast enough and _forcefully_ enough for the Garganta to collapse on itself. One Getsuga Jūjishō wasn’t _quite_ enough; no, what Ichigo needed was –

_Ah._

Instead of tapping out another text message, Kisuke pressed the _dial number_ button.

Ichigo peered down at him quizzically, but picked up dutifully nonetheless.

“Eyaaaa, a beauty complex doesn’t really suit you, Ichigo-san,” Kisuke chirped into the phone, ignoring all the strange looks he was getting. “It could have been so much worse – you could have been a hammerhead shark and I would have to lug around an aquarium just on the off-chance you need to Hollowfy.”

Ichigo snorted, both visibly and audibly.

“Idiot. That’s not why I’m waiting.”

“Oho?”

As though premediated, Uryū plopped down next to their group. “Ryūken just called,” he reported. “Chad and the rest made it through to the hospital.”

… oh.

He could hear Ichigo’s warm laughter through the phone. “ _That_ ,” Ichigo stressed, “was what I was waiting to hear. But thanks for the reassurance, geta-bōshi.”

And then he hung up.

Shinji had stopped trying to get Kisuke’s attention, and was just staring up at the sky like everyone else was doing.

Ichigo stuffed the phone back into his pocket, loosening his shoulders. And then he –

Even through the battle wards, Kisuke could feel the shift in his reiatsu, the outpouring of raw power as Ichigo entered Resurrección.

Well, not-quite-Resurrección. Reverse Resurrección? Kisuke had never bothered to put a name to the technique, or the form Ichigo adopted – okay, maybe once. The one time he tried to name that release form _Horny Ichigo_ , Ichigo had bunked with Renji for a week.

Orihime tugged meekly at his sleeve. “I’m done now, Kisuke-san!”

With great reluctance, Kisuke tore his eyes away from the Gran Rey Cero Ichigo was charging up.

“Guess I’d better take this seriously too,” he told no one in particular, getting up from the roof.

He had a promise to keep.

* * *

The basement was blessedly silent and empty; presumably all the other Visoreds were still in triage with Hachi.

Kisuke booted up his computer. First things first…

He flexed the fingers of his left hand, testing its flexibility and mobility. Orihime’s work was perfect, as usual.

Deactivating the kidō lock inscribed into the stone slab underneath his workstation was a simple matter, and Kisuke lifted the cage out from the hidden cubby-hole. The camera-fly trapped within buzzed angrily at him.

Hmm. He could’ve sworn he’d disabled it when he first captured it; Aizen must have programmed it to force a hard reset if turned off for too long.

No matter.

A bolt of kidō disabled it again, and then it was a matter of seconds to connect the camera-fly to his workstation, to hack through its protections and set up a direct link to the hive mind.

His thought process was simple: Aizen had fled so quickly that he shouldn’t have had the time to destroy his servers yet, which meant that Kisuke should be able to hack into the mainframe and take advantage of this already-established surveillance system to scan for traces of Aizen’s whereabouts.

It took him a few minutes before he could parse what was flashing on the screen; it was fading in and out of his sight, and the room might be spinning a little. Maybe there was another earthquake, although Kisuke thought he’d upgraded the wards after the last one.

He was halfway through writing a programme that would sort facial recognition hits for him when there was a clatter at the door.

“Hey,” Ichigo murmured, dropping a kiss onto Kisuke’s hair. He smelled like bath soap and water.

Kisuke didn’t need to ask to know it was over. Ichigo wouldn’t have come back – and taken a shower, no less – if there was still a single Garganta left open in Karakura.

“Hey,” he responded, turning his head so that he could catch Ichigo’s lips in a _proper_ kiss.

Or tried to, anyway – Ichigo backed away a step, barely stifling a yawn.

“Sorry,” he apologised, hoisting the… futon? Why was he dragging a futon into the lab? “I’d love to take you up on that, but I think I’m going to fall asleep on my feet.”

It had been over a week since he’d last had a good night’s sleep, Kisuke suddenly remembered, with a pang of guilt. Between catching catnaps in front of Kuchiki Rukia’s cell, and then the nonstop fighting throughout most of the morning, Ichigo must be exhausted.

Well into the afternoon, he corrected himself, checking the time.

“I’m just going to camp here,” Ichigo called over his shoulder, unrolling the futon in a corner of the lab, against the wall. “Wake me if you need anything.”

He was asleep almost the moment his head hit the pillow.

Kisuke maybe spent a few minutes too many staring blankly at his bare chest when Ichigo rolled over, his sleep robe gaping open.

He forced himself to turn back to his workstation. His vision was greying out at the edges, but it didn’t matter as long as he could still make out the words on the screen. The search was halfway through, just a little bit longer…

Either the room was shaking again, or _he_ was shaking, and it was probably the latter because Ichigo wasn’t waking up.

He… he felt weirdly bereft, all of a sudden. He wanted to go over and lie down next to Ichigo and never get up. He wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. He wanted –

“K’suke?”

Ichigo.

“Go back to sleep,” he gritted out.

A pause. “You’re upset,” Ichigo pointed out, sounding far more awake.

Damn their soul bond. Ichigo had had such a long week, what with fighting half the Gotei, fighting Aizen, and fighting what looked like half of Hueco Mundo. He deserved some real rest, not curled up on the cold rough floor of Kisuke’s lab getting woken up by something as trivial as this.

“It’s nothing, go back to sleep.”

There was a typo in the previous line of code. Kisuke rubbed at his eyes, in a vain hope that this would stop the letters from blurring.

Arms came around him, and then withdrew just as suddenly.

“You’re freezing!”

What?

Ichigo dragged him out of his seat, a hand around his arm like a vice, laying the back of his hand on Kisuke’s cheek. “My god, you’re – you’re going into shock, come here –”

His legs weren’t working, pins and needles shooting up his calves, but Ichigo just wrapped an arm around his waist and physically dragged him to the futon, tugging him down.

“Here, let me –”

Fingers were yanking on his obi, pushing his haori off his shoulders, and Kisuke would’ve helped, wanted to help, but his vision was going dark and his own fingers were clumsy like he couldn’t control them –

“Put your arms around my neck,” instructed Ichigo.

He barely managed to follow that order, even though it should’ve been simple enough, and hot shame bubbled up in his chest.

“Ichigo, I –”

The heat wasn’t going away. In fact, it was... expanding?

Flowing into him, with that hint of burning sensation that he belatedly recognised as Hollow-touched reiryoku.

He glanced down, already suspecting what he’d find.

Ichigo had managed to strip them both, and they were pressed bare skin against skin, Soul Sleep against Soul Sleep.

Direct reiryoku transfusion.

Already he was feeling better, vision stabilising, and now that sensations made sense again he could feel that Ichigo was still a lot warmer than he was, but no longer burning hot.

Well, Ichigo was always burning hot, but usually not quite so literally.

Kisuke finally roused himself enough to ask, “What’s shock?”

Ichigo blinked.

“Oh, uh, it’s a human term,” he said thoughtfully. “For, uh, too much blood lost. In your case it’s too much reiryoku lost, but same principle. You get really, really cold and clumsy, and a human will die if nobody notices. I’m not sure about shinigami.”

That sounded like reiryoku exhaustion.

“Yes, we do too.”

Ichigo’s arms tightened around him. “I should have _noticed_ ,” he muttered. “You literally duelled Aizen to a standstill on your own, and then came back here and worked...”

“You were busy,” reminded Kisuke gently.

Ichigo scowled. “Yeah, but never too busy for you.” He checked Kisuke’s temperature again with the back of his hand. “Are you going to die if I let you go now?”

Kisuke paused, taking stock of himself. “No.”

Ichigo shot him a disbelieving look.

“As long as there’s no more fighting in the next twelve hours,” Kisuke amended.

“That’ll just have to be the ones I take care of, then,” Ichigo said decisively. “Okay, in the meantime, take a nap.”

Kisuke jerked up, but Ichigo wouldn’t let him go. “I have to –”

“You’ve got a program running in the background running face recognition on all the files you hacked from the camera flies, it’ll compile the results automatically so you don’t _need_ to watch it,” Ichigo retorted.

Kisuke’s mouth might be hanging open.

“What?” Ichigo turned a little pink. “I do listen when you talk, you know.”

Kisuke was suddenly seized with the visceral urge to kiss him.

* * *

Ichigo waited until Kisuke’s breathing had evened out before he carefully rolled Kisuke off him, back against the wall, front pressed against Ichigo’s chest. He smoothed the blankets over Kisuke, making sure he was properly covered, before he rolled over, making sure Kisuke was completely hidden behind him.

“I know you’re there,” he told the room.

A moment later, a pair of glowing golden eyes appeared from behind a table.

“How long did you know I was there?” the cat asked.

“Since I woke up,” Ichigo told her honestly.

Yoruichi came closer, but sat a respectable distance away, exactly one-katana length. Ichigo appreciated the courtesy, even though it wasn’t really necessary; Yoruichi in whatever timeline would sooner claw out her own throat than hurt Kisuke.

“You’re good to him,” she said, apropos of nothing.

“He’s good for me,” Ichigo retorted instantly.

“I’m glad. That he has you, at the end. That he could love enough to bond.”

“It’s not like that,” Ichigo admitted.

The cat tilted her head to the side.

“The bond,” he clarified. “It wasn’t out of love. It was out of desperation.”

He remembered those days, could taste them at the back of his throat, the ashes and blood and smoke still hanging low in the air.

Kyōka Suigetsu had been _impossible_ to counter, pitting friend against friend, rendering anyone outside the designated reiatsu-recognising wards helpless.

Too many had died to their own allies.

They’d bonded out of desperation, out of a need to know the person they were fighting was the enemy. It didn’t matter that soul-bonding was sacred, that it was the equivalent of declaring marriage for eternity – there was no more Soul Society, no more shinigami, what mattered the traditions of a race eradicated when survival was at stake?

With a soul bond, you would always, _always_ recognise the reiatsu of your bonded.

There were five of them, at the end, on the run in the Transient World, skipping from safehouse to safehouse in an endless state of guerrilla warfare.

Renji, Rukia, Yoruichi, Kisuke, and Ichigo.

It was unorthodox, Kisuke had explained tiredly. An ancient marriage rite, used by the shinigami of old, to tie themselves to each other. But it was the only thing that would help them against Aizen, whose shikai ability ensnared the five senses – but shinigami had _six_ senses, and this might be the only thing that gave them a chance.

* * *

_They were camping in some little town Ichigo had long forgotten the name of, or maybe he never knew it in the first place, but he distinctly remembered there was a flower shop down the street._

_He remembered, because that was where he went the next morning._

_Snowdrops for Rukia and tiger lilies for Yoruichi, and a hand-carved sandalwood fan for Kisuke, because he wanted to do this proposal lark right, even if he hadn’t been expecting to marry four people at the same time._

_Renji had wailed about Ichigo making all of them look so bad, but he couldn’t stifle the grin spreading across his face, nor the bubbly surprise in his reiatsu._

_“So is that a yes or not?” Ichigo had demanded, thrusting the pineapple – carved into the shape of a bouquet for the occasion – into Renji’s face._

_“Stupid strawberry shortcake,” Renji had muttered, but he’d accepted the bouquet._

_That was around the time Kisuke turned up with five rings that he somehow managed to smelt and cast in some jewellery workshop he’d broken into, because why not._

_Yoruichi had asked, apparently perfectly serious, if anyone wanted her to gift them dead mice. Nobody took her up on that generous offer._

_It only got worse from there._

_A few weeks later, after several skirmishes and a few more changes of location, Ichigo came back from a grocery run to find the overgrown backyard of the current safehouse decorated with a thousand ice sculptures glittering in the afternoon sun._

_There were vines upon vines of flowers in full bloom twining up the lattices, crystal chimes swaying in the wind, goblets filled with their last bottle of sake (originally saved for a special occasion, but what could be more special than a wedding in the midst of a war?), and even a podium for some semblance of officiality._

_Renji cleared his throat. He was wearing his captain’s haori, which he never did anymore – Ichigo hadn’t even realised he still had it._

_“Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen,” he began, just as Kisuke and Yoruichi stumbled into the backyard, led by a beaming Rukia. “We are hereby gathered today to witness –”_

_Ichigo had facepalmed so hard he might’ve left a handprint on his forehead._

_After the wedding ceremony, it turned out that Yoruichi had been in on the conspiracy too. She came up to Ichigo, followed closely by Renji and Rukia, all three of them grinning like cats that had caught canaries._

_“Take tonight off,” she demanded, chivvying Kisuke and Ichigo into the house and then into the bedroom. “We’ll stand guard, you two just enjoy your wedding night.”_

_The bedroom, as Ichigo soon noticed, came equipped with a fully-functional bathroom, a mattress so new Ichigo could spot the plastic covering lying in the wastepaper basket, and a whole bottle of oil sitting prominently in the centre of the bed._

_They stared at each other, and then Kisuke gave a little helpless shrug._

_All things told, it was a very enjoyable night._

* * *

“You and Rukia spent the whole of breakfast arguing whether this made us all Shihōins or Kuchikis, since you were both technically the heads of your respective clans.” Ichigo’s fists clenched in the duvet, his gaze cast against the wall. “But actually Rukia was only doing this because she wanted to see Byakuya’s face when he hears the name ‘Kuchiki Renji’ – except then Renji objected to that, because ‘Abarai’ was the man he worked so hard to become, and then it all got worse from there.”

He barked out a short, almost humourless laugh.

“So I wanted to shut them up, right, so I asked _how about Shiba_ , since that one’s a noble clan too. And they were quiet for a bit, but then Kisuke was like, ‘but _Kurosaki Kisuke_ has a nice ring to it’ – and, well.”

Even the memory of that casual comment, like it was something totally natural, made his cheeks heat up and his belly squirm with pleasure.

“Aizen only ever tried to use it against us _once_. It’s kind of hard to come up with a good retort after Kisuke responds to his taunt with, ‘Well, you _can_ call me Kurosaki-Shihōin-Kuchiki-Abarai-Urahara Kisuke, but that is _such_ a mouthful, don’t you think, Aizen-san? Urahara Kisuke’s so much easier to say!’ I’m honestly surprised Aizen didn’t try to beat him over the head with that blasted fan.”

The ensuing silence was so long that Ichigo looked over to make sure Yoruichi was still in the room. One could never tell with that Shadow-Cat.

“I love him,” Ichigo said bluntly. He figured it deserved to be said, to the one person who cared about Kisuke as much as he did. “We’d probably eventually have bonded; I’m just sorry it has to be in this way.”

Soundlessly, Yoruichi got to her feet.

“I’m glad he has you beside him, at the end,” she finally spoke, her tone solemn, like a seal of approval. “I’ll show myself out, you just focus on him right now.”

Ichigo flopped back down onto the futon, tugging the covers higher, making sure it covered Kisuke properly.

Kisuke nestled into his back, nuzzling at the crook of his neck.

Ichigo exhaled, slowly.

He should keep watch, he knew. Kisuke was trusting him to. But they were in the centre of the wards, surrounded by allies, and Ichigo was between him and the only entrance.

“I’ll stand guard,” Yoruichi’s voice floated through the closed door.

Trust her to understand exactly what Kisuke needed.

Ichigo closed his eyes and let sleep drag him under.

* * *

When he awoke, Kisuke wasn’t there anymore.

There was no sense of panic or impending doom that Ichigo could sense, so it probably wasn’t an emergency that called him away. Perhaps it was dinnertime?

Out of habit, Ichigo checked his phone for any new messages.

There was just one, from his missing lover.

_I know where he is._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shameless plug for Bleach: Brave Souls the phone game, in which pretty much everyone calls that form _Horny Ichigo_.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I love you,” Ichigo whispered against his lips.  
> Kisuke inhaled.  
> Exhaled.  
> “I love you too."

He didn’t immediately see Kisuke when he ran out from the lab, throwing the covers aside in his hurry. There were far more people milling around the Shōten than he expected, not just Yoruichi and the Visoreds, but also what looked like half of the shinigami who’d been present during Rukia’s execution.

Including, apparently, Rukia herself.

“What are you doing here?”

He eyed her not-so-surreptitiously. How long had he been asleep? Had she even fully recovered from her ordeal yet?

Rukia tipped her chin up, staring at him stubbornly. “I want to see him dead with my own two eyes.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her not to, but it would be useless to get into a fight with her when she was like this, so he wasn’t even going to try.

Ichigo exhaled, shoulders slumping. “Have you seen Kisuke?” he asked instead.

Rukia gave him a suspicious side-eyed look, like she wanted to know why he wasn’t protesting but was still too polite to ask, but pointed in the direction of the kitchen.

Kisuke was indeed in the kitchen, nursing a cup of tea and staring at nothing in particular, so deep in thought that he barely looked up when Ichigo dropped onto the cushion next to him and brushed a kiss against his hair.

“When are we leaving?”

Kisuke blinked a few times, as though he hadn’t even noticed Ichigo’s presence before he spoke, although that couldn’t possibly be true. Ichigo knew, far better than anyone else in this timeline, how hypervigilant of his surroundings Kisuke was – even in the safety of his own house.

“As soon as Kūkaku-san gets the cannon set up,” Kisuke finally responded, when Ichigo was seriously debating whether to repeat his question.

“We’re going through the front door?”

Kisuke turned to look at him, a glimmer of his usual humour brightening his gaze.

“Well, I thought we should try it your way some time, just saunter in through the front door and beat up anything that comes our way.”

Ichigo knocked his shoulder into Kisuke’s a little harder than strictly necessary, and they stayed like that, shoulders pressed together, until Tessai poked his head in to tell them that the cannon was ready for launch.

* * *

Kisuke hadn’t been to the Soul King’s Palace for over a hundred years, but it still looked exactly like how he remembered it, sweeping arches and lofty ceilings, all done in an architectural style long lost to time.

They’d come up first, via the cannon, so that they could lower the Great Bridge of Magpies for the rest of the shinigami. However, the drawbridge would take a few minutes to descend all the way into Seireitei, time that Kisuke and Ichigo simply couldn’t afford to waste.

No, they were going on ahead _first_.

A hand on his arm stopped him before he could take a step into the Palace.

“What is it?”

He didn’t sense anything; but then, Ichigo had an intuition for danger that was near-precognitive.

Ichigo’s grip tightened, and then relaxed, his hand skimming up to Kisuke’s shoulder.

“I just –”

He cut himself off, the hesitation so uncharacteristic that Kisuke turned to face him, despite the situation they were in, the niggling voice at the back of his mind.

Ichigo was looking back at him, his gaze open and soft in a way that made Kisuke’s heart flip over in his chest, and he realised with startling clarity what was about to happen, right before Ichigo leaned in and kissed him.

It was just a brush of lips against his mouth, but it felt like so much more. One of Ichigo’s hands was resting on his shoulder, and the other was cupping his cheek ever-so-gently, like he was something precious, something to be cared for.

“I love you,” Ichigo whispered against his lips.

Kisuke inhaled.

Exhaled.

“I love you too,” he admitted quietly, ignoring everything inside him that still flinched at the confession. He loved Ichigo, he did, he _did_ – which was why he had to say something else right now, while in relative safety next to the drawbridge, while looking Ichigo in the eye.

“If I don’t make it out of –”

“ _No_.” Ichigo took a step back, his expression shuttering in an instant. “Don’t you dare say that, that won’t happen –”

Knowing what he would have to do, the lengths he would have to go to, Kisuke would beg to differ. “Ichigo, you know what my bankai does, you know the reason why I haven’t used it for a century –”

“I don’t care,” Ichigo retorted instantly. “It doesn’t matter, we’ll just have to –”

He loved Ichigo’s stubbornness, he really did, but in cases like this when Ichigo just simply refused to accept reality and expected it to bend to his will –

“It’s not something you can guarantee, with the short timeframe –”

“Then I’ll _make sure_ it takes less than ten minutes!” Ichigo shouted. His hands were balled into fists, and he looked like he was close to decking Kisuke out of sheer frustration. “I’ll definitely do it, so don’t you dare give up, don’t you _dare_ say things like that, when...” he cut himself off, turning his face to the side, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles were turning white.

Kisuke had to lean into his personal space to hear his next words.

“Don’t make me have to tell the kids you’re not coming home. Please.”

_Don’t make me have to go on without you._

He gathered Ichigo into his arms, pressing a kiss into his hair. He couldn’t promise it, Ichigo knew; would never ask him to, even if that was the only thing Ichigo wanted to hear.

 _I’ll do my best_ , said the kiss.

Ichigo breathed shakily into his neck, little warm puffs of air against Kisuke’s skin, and Kisuke was loathe to pull away, but he had to.

“We need to go,” he murmured into Ichigo’s hair.

After a drawn-out moment, Ichigo nodded.

When he pulled away, his eyes were dry.

“Let’s do this.”

* * *

The only difference from his memories was that the place eerily empty, far more than even its great size could account for. Surely they should’ve encountered a scurrying servant, a welcome retinue, or a stray guard by now…

But all Kisuke could hear was the echoing silence of their footsteps, Ichigo flitting in shunpo beside him.

Something was very wrong. Kisuke surveyed their surroundings again, stepping up the speed of his shunpo. Ichigo easily kept pace, sending Kisuke a concerned look, but he didn’t try to speak, didn’t interrupt his ruminations, _trusted_ Kisuke to tell him what he needed to know whenever he needed to know it.

Kisuke just loved him so much that he had no words for it, some days.

“Ichigo.” His voice came out perfectly even. “I think you had better go into shikai now.”

Ichigo didn’t waste a single breath on asking him why, just drew Zangetsu between this step and the next. “Ten ni nobori, hōgyoku o kasume –”

_To ascend the heavens, to grapple for the jewel –_

Kisuke spun, Benihime unsheathed, and caught the edge of Kyōka Suigetsu before it could strike true.

“Arara, Aizen-san, it’s not nice to interrupt when someone’s releasing shikai. It’s hardly their fault that their release phrase is so long, don’t you agree?”

“– umi no moguri, getsuei o sukure – _Ban-_ kai, Tensa _Zangetsu_!”

_– to dive into the seas, to scoop up the reflection of the moon._

Barely a pause, an inhalation of breath, his zanpakutō so in-tune with him that he could go from shikai release straight into bankai without having to gather his energy again.

 _Good choice_.

Time was against them now.

“It’s _Aizen-tenn_ _ō_ ,” Aizen snarled, his expression turning ugly in an instant. Kisuke gritted his teeth, bracing himself against the ground, muscles straining against Aizen’s Hōgyoku-enhanced strength.

And then Ichigo was there, barrelling into Aizen’s side, forcing him away from Kisuke.

* * *

They were far too deep into the Palace for even the fastest shinigami to come to their aid, Ichigo could tell – not that the Gotei would stand a chance against Aizen in their current state. No, they had to finish it, both before Kisuke ran out of time on his bankai, and before the Gotei could arrive.

_Nine minutes, forty-eight seconds._

It was enough.

It would have to be enough.

He would _make_ it enough.

He harried Aizen further, knowing without seeing that Kisuke was circling around, seeking the best defensive position to take. A grand hall like this wasn’t ideal, all wide-open space and no obstacles that Kisuke could capitalise on, but it didn’t matter. In another few seconds, Kisuke would’ve adjusted, would’ve made the battlefield his own.

There were no Menos, no Arrancars, no hostages around for Aizen to use as a distraction this time.

Five thick pillars crashed down upon Aizen, binding him for just the fraction of a second, just long enough for Ichigo to unleash a Getsuga Jūjishō.

Aizen coughed, batting the technique aside, but Ichigo could spy the edge of one sleeve smoking faintly.

And if he could still be hurt, he could still be _killed_.

The very air crackled, static making his hair stand on end, and Ichigo ducked on instinct – ducked and rolled to the side, just as a bolt of lightning lanced through the air, and the smell of ozone struck.

Thunder boomed belatedly, like an afterthought.

Speed-casting #88 without an anchor wasn’t much better than #91, but Ichigo didn’t have the time to yell at Kisuke for endangering himself like that, even knew _why_ Kisuke was doing it, but just because he understood didn’t mean he had to _like_ it.

He _hated_ seeing Kisuke get hurt.

Aizen began laughing, the sound completely incongruous amidst the clang of swords, echoing in the chamber.

“Is that all you can do?” He peered derisively over Ichigo’s shoulder. “Playing house has turned you soft and weak, _Kurosaki_ Kisuke.”

Ichigo couldn’t stop himself from flinching, because on some level that was _true_ ; they hadn’t sought Aizen out immediately after returning, and maybe they should’ve done that, but between making sure his sisters had a place to stay and that Kisuke wasn’t working himself to death in the lab, they’d thought… they’d thought they had more time.

Would things have been different if Ichigo had marched into Soul Society and killed Aizen the moment they came back?

Would –

“Without your bankai, you are no threat.”

Ichigo stopped moving.

The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up, responding to the reiatsu flooding the area, a practically tangible pressure. Kisuke didn’t have anywhere as much as Aizen or Ichigo did, but it was a respectable amount, far more than what most captains in the Gotei could boast of.

 _Danger_ , whispered his senses. _Here lies danger, all around you._

“What,” Kisuke asked, his voice like steel cloaked in silk, “ever gave you the impression that I wasn’t already in bankai?”

_Seven minutes, twenty-six seconds._

For the first time, Aizen was silent.

Whether it was because he refused to leave an opening for Kisuke’s most devastating bankai special ability, or his surprise at being out-manoeuvred, Ichigo didn’t know and frankly didn’t care. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Kisuke folding himself gracefully into seiza, his back against the wall and a blood-red shield wrapping around himself.

Waiting for a signal from Ichigo, an opening he could capitalise on.

Two Getsuga Jūjishō in quick succession, and then another, and a fourth for good measure, sending Aizen skidding backwards, putting some space between them –

– crimson panels appeared all around Aizen, trapping him in an instant. Still _Chikasumi no Tate_ , just an alternative application, one that turned it from a defensive shield to an offensive technique. Kisuke must be trying to conserve his energy, spending the bulk of his reiatsu on stacking smaller techniques.

Or he could be saving up for one big one, yeah.

“Kirisaki, _Benihime_!”

There was no way even someone like Aizen could dodge a thousand bullets fired simultaneously at him from all directions, and they kept coming, an unrelenting storm of blood.

_Six minutes left._

Ichigo gripped his swords tighter, settling into a stance. The moment Kisuke let up that barrage, he could –

Now!

He rocketed forwards, spying just the smallest gap in Aizen’s attention, just enough for him to land a strike –

“Don’t!”

Ichigo reared back in shock, responding instinctively to Kisuke’s voice, but he was still too slow to dodge the white spikes exploding out of Aizen’s shoulders, headed unerringly for Ichigo’s face. If it wasn’t for the shield springing into existence a half-inch from his head, taking the full force of the blow, he would’ve…

Behind him, Kisuke made an odd, hacking noise.

Ichigo turned, intending to thank him for the quick save, but he just.

Stopped.

Blinked.

Kisuke’s eyelashes fluttered, his eyes wide and uncomprehending. One of his hands was raised, opening and closing feebly, like he’d been trying to grab something, but was too late. His mouth opened, moving soundlessly, like he wanted to say something, but blood bubbled out instead.

The sword through his chest looked like a macabre nightmare.

* * *

She didn’t care if she was just going to be a burden. Kisuke and Ichigo hadn’t intended to wait for them, she could tell – they could all tell, but she was the only one fast enough to _do_ something about it, even if she wasn’t sure what, exactly, she could do.

She arrived just in time to see Aizen yank his sword out with a vicious squelch.

Just in time to see Kisuke fall.

For a moment, there was only silence.

Ichigo was just standing there, his swords dipping towards the floor, like he hadn’t processed, couldn’t even understand what he was seeing.

Aizen’s smile widened when he caught sight of her, and then it morphed into something more vicious, _pleased_. He took a step away, carelessly flicking the blood on his blade – _Kisuke’s blood_ – off.

* * *

He –

No.

_No._

He couldn’t –

That little smile still playing about Kisuke’s lips, the honest contentment in his eyes, right before he crumpled to the floor.

 _I’m glad you’re okay_.

* * *

Yoruichi couldn’t breathe.

For a moment she thought it was the disbelief, the sheer horror of the situation that was forcing her to her knees, but no: it was _r e i a t s u_.

Ichigo made a noise that wasn’t remotely human, a dual-toned shriek of fury, like a Hollow and a Hell’s Guardian rolled into one, the pitch so deafening that Yoruichi would have shrunk away had she been capable of moving.

And then he –

– _moved_.

Yoruichi didn’t even register the movement, not even a blur of motion that would suggest movement, but there was a hole in the wall – no, three walls – and Aizen was picking himself out of the rubble, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floor.

He was _still_ smiling.

* * *

Aizen dusted himself off, picking at invisible pieces of lint on his clothes, as though keeping them pristine was more important to him than the fight.

Ichigo was vaguely aware that he was trembling so hard he was _shaking_ , but it was as though he was standing in a dream, like he’d given over control to his Hollow or something.

Aizen laughed, like he was _enjoying_ this.

Ichigo couldn’t breathe.

“And now there’s no one left to save you!” Aizen called out, apparently deciding it was safe enough for him to talk.

Ichigo’s heart was beating against his ribs, a caged bird struggling to get out.

“No one else to die for you this time!”

He couldn’t…

Think. Thinking was hard.

Ki-kisuke had… had…

There were… plans.

Plans in case – case –

He couldn’t remember, and anyway it didn’t matter.

Right now, in this very moment, all he wanted to do was _wipe that smirk off Aizen’s face_.

* * *

Yoruichi managed to force herself onto all fours, wobbling like a newborn kitten, but she was getting used to the crushing presence of the reiatsu. Maybe.

Maybe if she used shunko…

Ichigo’s head was bowed, so Yoruichi couldn’t see his expression, but she didn’t need to see it, not with the crushing despair that hung like a thundercloud in the room, his very reiatsu stinging at her eyes.

Her fists clenched, and she slammed one fist down on the floor.

The entire Palace shook, and for a moment Yoruichi had the wild thought that it might’ve been _her_.

But then she looked up, back at where Ichigo had been standing.

There was a massive hole there, a spiderweb of cracks running through what remained of the floor, like he’d put a fist through it –

Or, more likely, simply lost control of his reiatsu during shunpo.

Yoruichi wondered if she’d ever taught him shunko. Her future self had to have done, right? If Ichigo had been as close to her as he’d implied…

* * *

Ichigo could barely hear Aizen’s words over the dull roar in his ears, the terrible pounding of his heart. His limbs didn’t seem to be working right, nor his lungs, nor… it didn’t matter.

He wanted –

He _wanted_ to tear Aizen limb from limb.

And then Aizen was directly in front of him, and Ichigo reached out, catching Kyōka Suigetsu with claw-tipped fingers, ripping the sword from his grasp and flinging it aside.

Aizen’s mouth opened, several expressions flickering over his face, and then he looked down, at himself.

Ichigo didn’t care.

Blood-red spikes exploded out of the centre of Aizen’s chest, shredding his clothes and half of his torso.

He could _see_ it –

Ichigo’s hand closed over the Hōgyoku and _wrenched_ it out.

* * *

Yoruichi couldn’t help it; she looked away from Aizen, back at where Kisuke was lying. He hadn’t moved, as far as she could see, but that technique that had just ripped Aizen apart… that was unmistakeably _his_ bankai ability.

Did he fake his death, biding his time until Aizen gave him an opening, so he could have one shot?

Kisuke wasn’t moving, but she didn’t think he was faking it this time. How long had it been since he activated bankai? Six minutes, eight minutes, _twelve_? How much blood had he lost already – and how much more did he spend on that final technique?

Yoruichi gritted her teeth, tried to force herself to her feet despite the crushing presence of two reiatsu powerhouses. She had to… she _had_ to…

* * *

Ichigo threw his head back and _s c r e a m e d_.

* * *

The force of an explosion – some kind of Cero, she thought dizzily, but bigger than any she’d ever seen before – knocked Yoruichi clean off her feet, sending her crashing into a wall. She shook her head, trying to get her eyes to focus back on the fight.

Ichigo was clutching a glowing orb in his hand – the Hōgyoku, she recognised in an instant – his claw-tipped fingers dripping with blood.

Aizen coughed, spitting out another mouthful of blood, but his eyes were alight with madness. “Do you _really_ think you can kill me, ryoka boy?”

* * *

Aizen’s voice was faint, like Ichigo was hearing him underwater, but he could parse the words just fine.

Kill him?

That had never been Ichigo’s dream.

All he ever wanted –

What he truly desired above all else –

“No,” he choked out, and it was like he was listening to someone else speak, their voice drenched in anguish. “I just want this to be _over_ –”

* * *

The unadulterated agony twisting Ichigo’s face made her heart clench.

How many years…

To have this hanging over their heads?

Aizen sped forwards with impressive speed for a man who was missing practically half his torso, reaching out for the Hōgyoku –

There was another explosion, and a blinding light so bright she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, and they were both screaming –

The light faded.

Yoruichi staggered upright, blinking furiously to clear away the last few spots in her vision.

Aizen was crumpled in a heap on the floor, in an ungainly manner he’d never have tolerated if he was conscious. She didn’t think this was an illusion this time.

Ichigo was lying motionless on the ground, his hand outstretched, his fingers barely an inch away from Kisuke’s, like he’d been reaching for him in his last moments.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy ending for all guaranteed (well, except Aizen).
> 
> \---  
> Aizen-tennō = Soul King Aizen


	10. Chapter 10

“Kisuke!”

She couldn’t help the scream that tore itself from her throat, flashing forwards to drop to her knees beside his fallen form, barely sparing Aizen another glance to make sure he was still lying in the same position as before.

The Hōgyoku had exploded in Ichigo’s hand, and if it was all one of Aizen’s illusions, well, she didn’t care anymore. Not when…

Not when –

Well. If Kisuke was dead, and Ichigo was dead, it wasn’t like she could pose any sort of threat to Aizen anyway.

There was the hurrying of footsteps, like half an army was coming upon them.

Late, as usual.

Yoruichi reached out, sternly told her fingers to stop trembling, and laid three of them against Kisuke’s wrist.

She closed her eyes.

There was no pulse.

* * *

Shinji felt his heart do a traitorous swoop the moment he heard Yoruichi scream, like he’d never heard before, not in the two centuries he’d known her.

Was Kisuke –

Were they –

They’d come as fast as they could, following the sounds of battle, but it was difficult with how the Palace seemed to be falling apart around them and with how they were pushing through a suffocating veil of reiatsu.

They turned another corner, and saw –

Even here, several of the pillars lay ruined, and part of the ceiling had caved in, letting in the natural light. A low mist hung over the area, the remnants of dust and debris still settling, but it was clear that the fight was over.

He didn’t even know Shihōin Yoruichi _could_ cry.

The rhythmic click of Yamamoto’s cane paused, just for the barest moment, and then the Sōtaichō carefully picked around the debris, headed towards where Aizen was lying. Unohana and Kyōraku went with him, and Shinji should too, had promised the other Visoreds that he _would_ check over Aizen’s dead body with his own two hands, but he couldn’t make himself move.

He’d hoped for, he’d _dreamed_ about this exact moment – although he’d also hoped that he could have been the one to kill Aizen, but he wasn’t a fool. There was no way he was a match for this Aizen.

He just never –

* * *

Shunsui sighed, and felt very, very old.

“This is definitely Aizen-san, and he is certainly dead,” Unohana finally pronounced, standing back up.

Yama-jii nodded solemnly, and unsheathed Ryūjin Jakka. They weren’t going to take any chances.

He looked away from the burning body, back at where the rest of the Gotei was standing, milling around aimlessly now that there was no one to fight.

What a mess.

They had a couple of kids, if Shunsui remembered right. Someone was going to have to explain to the children, and to figure out what to do with them. Especially Kurosaki’s younger sisters; someone would have to take them in, teach them what it meant to be _Inner Sanctum_.

He wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.

Shunsui was already looking that way, and so he was one of the first to spot a figure coalescing from the mist, appearing next to Yoruichi between one blink and the next.

Thankfully, she wasn’t so deep in her grief that she lost all sense of her surroundings, and she looked up –

* * *

– and kept staring.

The figure ignored her completely, kneeling down next to Kisuke and Ichigo, and exhaled a drawn-out sigh.

Yoruichi wasn’t even sure the other figure could see her at first, and the reason for that was –

* * *

Shinji took two steps forwards instinctively, hand dropping to the hilt of Sakanade, before he caught himself. That –

Was she even real?

The apparition looked up at him, golden eyes glittering in the dim light, her pupils slit like a cat’s.

He knew instantly who that must be, but –

* * *

She could see parts of the floor through the spectre.

Yoruichi stayed in her crouch, watching the other woman warily.

“It is as we feared, then.” The apparition’s voice was surprisingly clear, despite the seemingly intangible nature of her form. “The worst-case scenario.”

She laid one hand on Kisuke’s, and the other on Ichigo’s; dragged them both closer just that inch so that she could tangle their fingers together.

Not so intangible after all, Yoruichi thought. She didn’t know what the other woman was doing, but was loathe to ask.

Then the spectre looked directly at her.

* * *

Shunsui turned around, just to make sure Aizen’s body was definitely burning to ashes. Yama-jii was gripping Kyōka Suigetsu with one hand, clearly thinking the same thing as he was.

Aizen was dead, his zanpakutō dormant.

This was no illusion.

* * *

“Shihōin Yoruichi,” said the ghost of her future self. “I have a favour to ask of you.”

The tear tracks were still drying on her cheeks, but Yoruichi found it in herself to ask, “Did Kisuke plan for –”

“ _No_!” Her future self rocked back on her haunches like she’d been slapped. “He would never – no.” She looked down at their interlaced fingers. “No,” she repeated, quieter. “Ichigo is his Queen, yes, but us – we have always been his final _Ace_. Even if he would have wished it otherwise.”

Future Yoruichi looked back up at her, still cradling the pair of hands like they were the only things that mattered to her anymore, but didn’t say anything else.

Yoruichi too glanced down at Kisuke’s face. She would almost have thought he was just sleeping, if it wasn’t for the trails of dried blood on his cheeks, down the corner of his mouth. She didn’t doubt that he would have thought of this, _could_ have planned for this, even – but no. Kisuke would never have asked her to, and what little she knew of Ichigo told her that he wouldn’t have, either.

She didn’t know everything that had transpired in this future of theirs, but she could honestly have said that she might have made the same choice, and this, _this_ was what future Yoruichi must’ve been counting on, must’ve pinned all her hopes on, in the event that something like this was to happen.

Past, present or future, there was very little she wouldn’t do for Kisuke.

Her mind was made up.

“Tell me what I must do,” Yoruichi said steadily.

Her future self smiled, sad and proud at the same time, shoulders slumping in visible relief.

“You’ve already guessed it, haven’t you?”

* * *

Shinji wasn’t close enough to hear their conversation, but he could see the moment Yoruichi seemed to come to some sort of decision, laying her hands over Kisuke and Ichigo’s joined ones, directly on top of her future self’s.

He could see the spectre’s mouth moving.

 _On the count of three_ , she said. _One, two, three –_

“Ban- _KAI_!”

* * *

The resultant torrent of reiatsu was so strong it almost knocked Shunsui off his feet. He kept a hand on his straw hat, his pink kimono billowing furiously in the veritable hurricane.

Both Yoruichis were glowing, an aura of shining gold surrounding each of them, and the very floor was shaking with the combined force of their reiatsu.

“Yoruichi-sama!” he could’ve sworn he heard Suì-Fēng scream, but it was barely audible over the gales rocking the very foundation of the Palace.

A giant cat rose up behind each of them, multiple tails fanning out behind it like a peacock’s plumage.

One of the Yoruichis – the apparition, the _future_ one – had two.

The other had seven.

* * *

Yoruichi couldn’t help but swallow.

Just two left.

The war against Aizen had lasted seven years, she recalled Ichigo once saying.

In those seven years, she’d died five times?

Her future self sent her a slight grin that looked more like a grimace than anything else, and inclined her head in a brief nod.

Yoruichi couldn’t help but tighten her grip on Kisuke’s and Ichigo’s hands.

She’d thought… she’d thought she _knew_ , intellectually, what the war had been like. How everyone had died, how they’d been so desperate they were willing to soul-bond to each other just to have a sliver of _hope_ of winning – but she knew nothing at all, did she?

Nothing of the torment they must’ve gone through, the anguish at having to do this all over again, the sacrifices they must’ve made, all for a chance at stopping Aizen.

But it was all over, and she was fiercely glad for this, glad that her future self had thought to build in one final failsafe, _glad_ that she could give them a chance to live in a world without Aizen hanging like a guillotine over their heads.

One of the tails whipping through the air opposite her dissolved into sparkling golden motes, and then the other.

Breathing was suddenly like inhaling a lungful of shattered glass, and she knew without having to turn around that the same must be happening for her own.

The shimmering gold specks spun in the air like the first showers of spring, cloaking the two bodies on the floor in faerie dust.

Future Yoruichi’s bankai manifestation got to its feet, just as graceful as ever despite the lack of tails to keep its balance, and then dipped its head in a full bow of gratitude.

* * *

Shinji shielded his eyes, squinting through the bright golden light, trying to see what was going on. He had no idea what just transpired, other than it seemed to involve a lot of reiatsu.

Well, most bankais did, but he couldn’t see how a bankai could help someone who was already dead, unless –

No, it couldn’t be, that was too ridiculous an ability for a bankai –

Then again, it was all a matter of relativity. The Sōtaichō’s bankai summoned the charred skeletons of every foe whom Ryūjin Jakka had ever defeated in battle to his aid, his own bankai warped all directions into an infinite loop and disrupted the vestibular system, and Aizen’s mere _shikai_ could apparently place the five main senses of as many people as he wanted under perfect hypnosis.

Who was he to judge the impossibility of anything?

The moment the light began to die down, he began walking forwards.

He needed to see it for himself.

* * *

There was the slightest pause, and then Kisuke’s chest rose and fell in what was unmistakeably a breath.

Yoruichi let out the breath she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding.

Her future self too was staring down at the two of them, her face transformed with incandescent joy.

“Nine lives, eh?”

Yoruichi glanced up at Shinji, only then remembering that they had an audience, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret it. If showing her bankai to the entire Gotei was the price she had to pay to have Kisuke alive and _happy_ , then, by the Throne of Heaven, she would pay it _gladly_.

“Yes,” she confirmed.

Most people only had the one life; she was lucky.

“It doesn’t… it’s not supposed to work on anyone else.” She looked over at her future self for an explanation.

“It’s the soul bond.” Her future self tucked her legs under herself, still absently stroking Kisuke’s knuckles with a thumb. “There’s just enough of my reiatsu in the two of them for my bankai to work on them too.”

Yoruichi glanced down at the pair, her eyes catching on the way their chests were steadily rising and falling in apparent slumber.

“Will you tell me how you died?”

She couldn’t get Kisuke’s words from the day before out of her head, nor his expression; _And now I know she died for nothing_ reverberating in her mind.

Her future self gave her a steady look.

“It has nothing to do with him, you know,” she said conversationally, and Yoruichi let out a breath. “It’s all my own fault. He’d made that time machine thing already, and I was on a routine scouting trip to make sure we’d have time to activate it.” She paused, her gaze going distant. “But I was careless. I got hit by one of those new Hollows, a flesh-eating necrotising poison that’s impossible to treat by the time I figured out what’s going on.”

She looked away. “Kisuke wouldn’t have it, of course. Tried to get me to stay, but there’s no way anyone can treat something like this. So I lied to him. I told him it was my last life, and then I knocked him out, and left in the middle of the night; went to Las Noches, wanted to buy them enough time to activate the machine and get out of there.”

She shook her head, a humourless smile playing about her lips.

“It was useless, of course. Aizen – I never did find Aizen, I’m not sure if the Hōgyoku snagged onto the activation and tagged along, or whether Aizen found the machine later on and used it himself.”

Yoruichi didn’t know what to say to that.

Future Yoruichi tilted her head to the side, almost like a cat would.

“Ah. They’re finally coming,” she said.

* * *

Rukia wrung her hands subtly, unsure of what to do. It looked like… like Urahara and Kurosaki might be okay after all, and Aizen was dead – but she had so many questions that she didn’t know where to start.

How well had Kurosaki known her in the future? How close had they been?

Beside her, Renji suddenly made an aborted motion, and she suddenly realised that there were more people appearing from the mist, but much slower than Future-Yoruichi-san had.

Except two of them; they were coalescing at a rate far faster than the others were, and with a start Rukia recognised them both.

One of them looked over and said something to Future-Yoruichi-san, who grinned broadly, picked up Urahara and flashed to the side of the hall. Yoruichi-san and Shinji-san followed, rather belatedly.

The other bent down, sucked in a _huge_ breath, and _yelled_ –

* * *

“GOOOOOD MOOOOORNING ICHIIIGOOOOO –”

He was lashing out before his mind even came fully online, shouting back on pure instinct, “WHAT THE HELL YOU CRAZY WOMAN –”

And then he realised what, exactly, was wrong with that.

Ichigo’s eyes snapped open.

He stopped.

Stared.

“Hey, Ichigo,” said Rukia, her hair as white as snow, her robes creating frost patterns where they trailed over the floor. The exact way he’d last seen her, the way she’d died.

“Rukia.”

There was someone behind him, an inferno of blazing reiatsu he would’ve recognised blind and deaf, and Ichigo turned his head, not daring to believe –

“Hey, strawberry shortcake,” greeted Renji.

“Hey yourself, pineapple tart,” Ichigo retorted on autopilot, but then he simply had to _stare_ for a moment, turning his head from one to the other. “How…”

Rukia pulled a face. “The Hōgyoku,” she explained shortly. “Everyone Aizen killed – he fed our souls to the Hōgyoku, that’s how he’s been keeping it so strong. But since you destroyed it, we’re free to pass on.”

“We?” repeated Ichigo, not daring to hope, needing to know –

A sudden thought struck him. “ _Kisuke_!”

“He’s fine, he’s over there,” Rukia supplied, pointing over to the side of the hall.

Ichigo turned so fast he almost gave himself whiplash, to see Kisuke sitting up, leaning against the wall. He seemed a little bit dazed, and there were two Yoruichis beside him – one, presumably, _their_ Yoruichi and one from the present. Past. Something.

Time travel was _confusing_.

He scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Seriously, you could look a little happier to see us,” complained Rukia, that frustrated and fond tone so achingly familiar that Ichigo could feel the beginning of tears stinging at his eyes.

He never… he’d never expected to be able to see them again, much less like this, much less at the end of everything.

Rukia made an inarticulate noise, and then there was a little bit of a scuffle, and then arms drew him into a hug.

Eight extra years of life, and Renji was still taller than him. Life was just unfair sometimes.

Rukia pressed into him on the other side, a lot warmer than Ichigo would’ve expected, given that she was still in bankai. Did shinigami-ghosts have bankai?

“We can’t stay for long,” Rukia admitted. “Just long enough to say goodbye, and to thank you for doing what we couldn’t.”

There was that word again.

 _We_.

Did that mean…

Ichigo lifted his head up, scanning the hall properly this time.

There were a lot more people than he expected, including what looked like the entire Gotei gathered in two rows, Yamamoto in the centre.

Er, one Yamamoto. There was another one to the side, watching the proceedings with narrowed eyes.

Renji shot to his feet. “I need to go,” he threw over his shoulder. It looked like he finally figured out the trick Byakuya used to make his captain’s haori billow behind him like there was an invisible wind, which made Ichigo stifle a snigger.

He had the feeling he knew what was about to happen, made all the more amusing by the way Rukia blinked at Renji’s rapidly departing form. “Are we holding a… Gotei meeting?” she asked, a little blankly.

 _Their_ version of Yamamoto slammed his cane on the floor, leaning on it. “Kuchiki Rukia-san,” he boomed.

At least he didn’t try to say Kurosaki-Shihōin-Urahara-Abarai-Kuchiki Rukia-san, Ichigo consoled himself.

Rukia jumped up like she’d been electrocuted. “Uh, ye-es, Sir?”

“Come forth.”

With a confused glance at Ichigo, Rukia walked forwards, between the two lines of captains and vice-captains.

Ichigo glanced over at Kisuke, and he could see the same amusement being reflected in Kisuke and Yoruichi’s eyes. It was probably exactly what he was thinking of, then.

“We will now hold the investiture ceremony,” Yamamoto began without aplomb, the moment Rukia drew near. “I expect this would have already been known to all of you gathered here. Seven years ago, the traitors known as Aizen Sōsuke, Tōsen Kaname and Ichimaru Gin declared war against the Gotei. Accordingly, we began proceedings to appoint new captains to their divisions.” He paused, and both Renji and Hisagi stood up a little straighter. “Six years later, in front of two hundred witnesses, including three existing captains, Kuchiki Rukia struck a fatal blow upon former Fifth Division Captain Aizen Sōsuke using her bankai. Therefore, the Fifth Division is hers by right of both proficiency and combat.”

“What,” said Rukia, rather faintly.

Yamamoto looked like he either hadn’t heard her, or was ignoring her. “Furthermore, official notices had previously been sent out to every captain for nominations.”

A woman whom Ichigo vaguely recognised as Kyōraku’s vice-captain stepped out neatly from the line, handing over a stack of papers so thick, they covered half her face. Yamamoto flipped the first one open. “By the recommendations of every current captain in the Gotei, every current lieutenant, Shiba Kūkaku on behalf of the Shiba Clan,” he paused, flipping through a few more papers, “Kurosaki Ichigo and assorted human ryoka, Urahara Kisuke, Shihōin Yoruichi, every one of those who are known as Visoreds, and a… cat,” and that pause was definitely more amused than anything else, “Kuchiki Rukia-san has been unanimously nominated for captaincy.”

Ichigo remembered signing that. It had been somewhat of a joke at the time; he’d seen the forms Renji was carrying around, and had introduced it to this human invention known as a _photocopier_ , and next thing he knew Inoue was passing them around in class, bringing them to the Shōten after school, and of course it snowballed from there. It didn’t matter, like how Renji had been weakly protesting, that the nomination form was only meant for captains. Half the Visoreds used to be captains anyway, and Lisa had this glint in her eye like she was _hoping_ Kyōraku would object to her signature, just so she’d have an excuse to kick his ass –

And by the time he saw a form with nothing but a muddy paw print on the signature line even Renji had to give in and just laugh at the absurdity of it all.

“Therefore,” Yamamoto was saying, “I hereby appoint the former unseated member of the Thirteenth Squad, Kuchiki Rukia, as the new Captain of the Fifth.”

The entire hall was so silent you could hear a pin drop.

And then, Ichigo had no idea who, someone started clapping.

* * *

Rukia watched with wide eyes as her future self settled into the empty space between Renji and Komamura-taichō like she _belonged_ there, even exchanged a few words with a smiling Hinamori.

Was that really –

She’d never thought –

“Dismissed.” The future Yamamoto had to raise his voice to be heard over the loud cheering, but even she could tell he wasn’t truly upset.

Her future self grabbed Renji’s hand, dragging him across the row to where the Captain of the Sixth Division was standing. “Nii-sama,” she greeted, loudly enough that even Rukia could hear her. “May I introduce to you, Kuchiki Renji –”

“Oy!” Renji yelped, while at the same time Byakuya’s eyes narrowed.

“Chire, Senbonzakura –”

Rukia slapped her hands over her mouth in horror, but her future self simply laughed, and – she squinted, but there were no hand motions she could see or verbal commands she could hear, and yet the pink blades froze over, one by one, their movements slowing.

“Kuchiki- _taichō_ ,” gasped Future Renji, but it was in such a playful tone, like he wasn’t the slight bit worried, tilting his head to the side as a few of the frozen blades drifted past.

“Seriously?” Future Hisagi demanded. “Isn’t having to call them Kuchiki and Kuchiki bad enough, what made you think having _three_ Kuchiki captains is a good idea?”

Future Byakuya sniffed, but he was obviously haughtily pleased by the thought, Senbonzakura returning to its sealed state.

Future Rukia turned, her eyes dancing, and Rukia froze when her future self looked directly at her, and started walking in her direction. She was still towing Renji around, like she’d forgotten she was still holding his hand.

“You know,” her future self said, using a finger to tip her chin up, “you need to smile more. Kaien’s death isn’t your fault, stop beating yourself up about it and just _get stronger_ so that it never happens again. And nii-sama really loves you, even though he might not show it very well. Ask him to tell you about your sister.”

Her sister?

Rukia didn’t remember ever having a sister.

By the way nii-sama – _her_ nii-sama, not the future one – was stiffening beside her, though, the words meant something to him.

“And make sure you go and try all the confectioneries in the Transient World, ask Ichigo to take you around all the pastry shops, that’s my only regret, you know? They’re all so delicious, but I never did get the time to try them all.”

Her smile dimmed a little.

“You might as well just drag me along,” Future Renji interjected, but the way he looked at Future Rukia made it clear that he was protesting just for the sake of protesting. “Some of those pastries _are_ actually pretty good,” he confided in his own past self.

“Especially if you get Ichigo to pay for them!” continued Future Rukia, a little more brightly.

Rukia barked out a startled laugh.

Was that… the reason why Kurosaki had looked like he was about to cry when he bought her that parfait?

“And you,” Future Renji was telling his past self. “You’ll definitely _do it_ , you know?” He clenched a fist, raising it up to his chest. “Your hard work _does_ pay off. There will come a day when Kuchiki Byakuya sees you as his equal, and I don’t know what it’ll be like for you, but for me –” he turned around, and… it wasn’t like Rukia hadn’t realised he was wearing a captain’s haori before, but it was the first time she was getting a good look at it, at the large kanji for THREE stitched over the white cloth. “He was the one to nominate me for the position.”

* * *

Ichigo shook his head as he made his way over to their side of the hall, looking a little overwhelmed, and Kisuke honestly couldn’t blame him.

This had never featured in his calculations.

Being stabbed by Aizen had been a calculated risk; take himself out of the picture, and the megalomaniac wouldn’t be able to stop himself from gloating, would leave an opening that Kisuke could capitalise on.

He’d been bleeding for so long that the very air was soaked in his blood, and all he needed was Aizen to open his mouth, to drop the barrier that kept him impenetrable.

But the amount of blood loss should’ve been fatal, and Kisuke had honestly been afraid that he’d pass out before he could activate his final technique.

He certainly hadn’t expected to wake up again after that.

Kisuke reached out, tentatively laying a hand on Ichigo’s shoulder, tugging him a little closer. He had no doubt he was going to get it later; but the fact that he was alive to be yelled at was already a miracle.

Alive, and Aizen was dead.

He was going to have to figure out how to get used to that.

All around them, the shinigami from a future that would never come to pass were going up to their past selves, offering advice or platitudes or anything they could think of.

“You need to get stronger,” Future Zaraki was saying. “What the hell, one fancy illusion and you’re fighting the wrong person.”

A stronger Zaraki Kenpachi, immune to illusions. That would be something to see indeed.

Next to them, Future Madarame was practically elbowing Future Ayasegawa out of the way. “What the hell,” he demanded indignantly, voice loud enough to carry easily, “how dare you be holding back in our fights this whole time, and with some pansy-poor reason like ‘it’s not the way of the Eleventh’?” Before Ayasegawa could say anything, he was already continuing, “We _are_ the damned Eleventh, so whatever we do is the way of the Eleventh, innit?”

A loud slap caught his attention before he could see the response to that, made him turn to look at Future Matsumoto, who had her arms akimbo and was glaring at Ichimaru.

Next to her, Future Ichimaru was just shaking his head. He didn’t seem to have said anything, but he slid his hand into Future Matsumoto’s, and, well, that was all that needed to be said.

Kisuke hoped they sorted themselves out soon, if only because Matsumoto-san had the unfortunate propensity to drink the Shōten’s entire stock of sake when she was in a mood.

And over there, in the corner –

Future Yamamoto was striding up to his past self, who was watching him with narrowed eyes.

“Had I lived to retirement, I would have appointed Kurosaki Ichigo to be my successor.”

Kisuke’s eyebrows shot up.

Ichigo as Sōtaichō… would’ve been a sight to see.

A piercing whistle made them all wince and look around.

“Sorry,” shouted their Renji, not looking very apologetic at all. “But we don’t have much time left, and there’s something I want to do first, something we didn’t manage to do right during the war.” He turned, looking directly at them.

He couldn’t possibly be implying –

“Once upon a time, in a future that will never come to be, I officiated a wedding in some swampy backyard overgrown with weeds, for two of the most determined, most devoted people I’ve ever had the honour to meet in my life.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Kisuke could see Ichigo’s mouth drop open in understanding.

“They had no friends, no guests, not even a proper celebration,” Renji continued. “And so, now that we are all gathered here, I think it’s only right that we give them the wedding they deserve.”

Kisuke glanced over, to find that Ichigo was already staring at him, face alight with the same kind of disbelief Kisuke was feeling.

There was a sudden commotion, everyone going for their zanpakutō, and it was like no shinigami wedding Kisuke had ever witnessed before. No one – not even another captain, he didn’t think – this had never happened before, had it? A wedding being blessed by every single member of the Gotei?

“Well, what are you waiting for?” demanded Shinji. Kisuke looked over to see Sakanade in shikai form, but no hint of the inverted world, just clouds of pink mist in the air. “Go on already.”

Ichigo squeezed his hand lightly.

“What’s going on?” he asked quietly, as they started walking.

“Shinigami wedding tradition,” answered Kisuke in an equally soft tone. “To show your blessing for the couple, you do something with your zanpakutō or any field of specialisation, the more elaborate the better –”

He cut himself off as flames leapt up the far wall, curlicuing into the calligraphic characters for _love_ and _strength_.

Even the Sōtaichō, too?

While he was distracted, a makeshift altar had appeared, although Kisuke couldn’t tell who – or how many people – made it at first glance. Probably the more physical zanpakutōs, he noted. Green vines twined around the base, both holding it in place and as a decorative choice. Definitely Ayasegawa’s work.

A pair of black cats raced up the makeshift altar, settling on either side of it, like two fortune animals.

Hitsugaya was scowling, but Daiguren Hyōrinmaru was hovering behind him, spitting out a continuous stream of ice that Rukia was twirling into trellises, as fine as spun glass and twice as lovely.

A shower of cherry blossom petals rained from the sky when they got onto the altar, swirling about in an invisible breeze.

“I hope Suì-Fēng doesn’t stab us,” Ichigo muttered.

Renji was waiting for them at the top of the altar, holding a tray of three cups he’d gotten from… somewhere. Maybe it was Matsumoto or Kyōraku. Or Ichimaru; his sleeves were certainly wide enough for him to be hiding a couple of cups up there.

Kisuke sipped at the first cup he was given, and nearly choked in his surprise. There was actual sake in the cup, not just water like he’d assumed. Someone – one of the Eleventh, maybe? – had died with sake on them?

Ichigo’s fingers brushed against his as they exchanged cups. Kisuke couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

Someone else had produced paper streamers in place of Sakaki, _somehow_. Kisuke discreetly glanced around, to find Kyōraku’s vice-captain adjusting her glasses, her eyes flashing.

Renji was watching them with a large grin on his face, one that spoke of nothing but trouble. “And now, from me.” His bankai rose up all around him, glowing a familiar red, its mouth pointed towards the sky.

“Hikotsu _Taihō_!”

Ichigo dove off the altar before the explosion hit, dragging Kisuke by the hand, but he was laughing as he did so. “Is that your idea of fireworks?!” he demanded, pointing an accusing finger at Renji.

Kisuke snagged Ichigo by the collar before he could continue yelling at Renji and kissed him.

There was still much they had left to do, cleaning up Aizen’s labs and figuring out what he had done in this timeline, but now – in this moment, right now, all he wanted to do was kiss his husband, because Aizen was finally dead, and just because he _could_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks to the UraIchi Event Discord server, without whose cheerleading I couldn't possibly have managed to finish this so fast.
> 
> Why does everything I write lately turn into its own series...

**Author's Note:**

> [cywscross's UraIchi Discord server](https://discordapp.com/invite/ADFnKTZ#_=_) | [Starrie's server](https://discord.gg/8yJVmbD) | [Tumblr](http://starriewolf.tumblr.com)


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